In light of the recent fires at public buildings including schools, the Guyana Fire Service (GFS) has intensified night inspections at these institutions countrywide.
This was revealed by Fire Chief Gregory Wickham during an interview with this publication on Wednesday.
“Even before the fires at school started, we have been doing inspections at schools. After those known fires, we continue to do inspections and not only inspections but going into the structure and identifying where and what types of firefighting equipment need to be installed we have also been doing visits to schools in the evening and that is throughout the county and that is a practice we want to continue because we recognise that these school generally have becoming under treats and we want to avoid that as far as practically possible,” he noted.
“Not only school but government properties,” Wickham added.
He said this initiative is also aimed at identifying potential fire hazards that might go unnoticed during regular daytime inspections.
During these inspections, the Fire Chief said his team discovered a slew of fire safety violations within ministries, private buildings, and schools.
“Some of the main things or reoccurring factors we have seen during fire inspection throughout the country whether that being a private property or government property is persons grilling their buildings and not having fire escape plan; persons not using smoke detectors and fire alarms or even fire extinguishers. And so those are some of the common things we find when we do inspections throughout the county whether that being government or non-governmental properties.”
