News / Regional
Firemen turn to clowns as house burns down
14 Sep 2015 at 22:33hrs | Views
More 1 of 17,933 Gwanda Residents resorting to help the fire team in a recent fire in the town
Municipality of Gwanda firemen literally "turned themselves into clowns" as they dramatically failed to deal with a burning house over the weekend.
A fully furnished four bedroom house belonging to mining company Forbes and Thompson caught fire on Saturday afternoon few minutes after electricity was restored in the town following eight hours of load shedding.
The Municipality Fire Brigade was immediately summoned to attend to the fire.
The fire department arrived on site within 8 minutes of the call in two fire vehicles. Drama immediately began when the two fire vehicles got to the scene with one fireman each while the equipment requires minimum four men to operate it.
The out of sorts firemen initially battled to connect the hosepipes on both vehicles. When they eventually connected the hoses, each vehicle had enough water to use for no more than three minutes each.
Make matters worse for the fire team, the nearby fire hydrants and all neighbouring houses had no water as the town was going through a ZINWA water rationing session.
With the fire getting out of control, the fire teams left the scene of the fire to rush to fetch water from borehole sources miles away from the site. One of the vehicles actually had to be driven over five kilometres across town to get a water bowser which is normally attached to the vehicle from a funeral wake of at the home of a deceased Council employee.
The vehicles returned to the scene of the fire nearly 45 minutes later but the house had already burnt to ashes.
Witnesses who revealed the story to media blamed the inefficiency of the fire department for the complete burning of the house.
"These guys got to the fire on time when the fire was still manageable but they just looked out of sorts and looked like clowns as they battled to operate their own equipment," said the witness.
"They sprayed water for just about three minutes and their water was used up. By the time they came back the house was gone."
In the last few months several properties have been burnt down while the fire team battled in vein to put out the fire. The last such incident was the burning down of the Power sales shop which has since closed down.
A fully furnished four bedroom house belonging to mining company Forbes and Thompson caught fire on Saturday afternoon few minutes after electricity was restored in the town following eight hours of load shedding.
The Municipality Fire Brigade was immediately summoned to attend to the fire.
The fire department arrived on site within 8 minutes of the call in two fire vehicles. Drama immediately began when the two fire vehicles got to the scene with one fireman each while the equipment requires minimum four men to operate it.
The out of sorts firemen initially battled to connect the hosepipes on both vehicles. When they eventually connected the hoses, each vehicle had enough water to use for no more than three minutes each.
Make matters worse for the fire team, the nearby fire hydrants and all neighbouring houses had no water as the town was going through a ZINWA water rationing session.
With the fire getting out of control, the fire teams left the scene of the fire to rush to fetch water from borehole sources miles away from the site. One of the vehicles actually had to be driven over five kilometres across town to get a water bowser which is normally attached to the vehicle from a funeral wake of at the home of a deceased Council employee.
The vehicles returned to the scene of the fire nearly 45 minutes later but the house had already burnt to ashes.
Witnesses who revealed the story to media blamed the inefficiency of the fire department for the complete burning of the house.
"These guys got to the fire on time when the fire was still manageable but they just looked out of sorts and looked like clowns as they battled to operate their own equipment," said the witness.
"They sprayed water for just about three minutes and their water was used up. By the time they came back the house was gone."
In the last few months several properties have been burnt down while the fire team battled in vein to put out the fire. The last such incident was the burning down of the Power sales shop which has since closed down.
Source - Byo24News
