Will G.O.B. Purchase a Chopper to Fight Wildfires?

Prime Minister John Briceño has also weighed in on the devastating wildfires that are affecting parts of southern and western Belize.  Amid ongoing public discourse, there has been talk that the country should acquire a helicopter to provide aerial support for firefighting.  But, is the P.M. down with purchasing a new chopper for that sole purpose?  And where is the new NEMO minister on a supplementary budget for disaster relief?

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“We are working on that and he’s working on a new budget and despite everything, we can‘t let the best be the enemy of the good.  And in this sense, this issue about air support, air support, guys we don‘t even own a helicopter and for us to be able to say we‘re going to own a helicopter to be able to… let’s be real, let’s be realistic.  What we are looking at is how we can organize this whole firefighting forest fires, how we’re going to fight them and it has been from top to bottom.  And of the ideas, I think he is the deputy chair of APAMO and what he was saying is that we need to start from the community level, to start at the community level to give them some sort of training and a little bit of equipment so that in most instances we can contain it.  We also have to look at controlled burning, something that has not been done that you burn your underbrush or your forest not when it is the hottest and we can get rid of some of the debris so that if there is a fire it’s not going to be, it’s not going to be huge and as destructive as what it was.”