Byo plans to have two new fire stations

Tinomuda Chakanyuka
BULAWAYO City Council is set to construct two additional fire stations within the next three years at a total cost of $120 000 as part of the local authority’s efforts to enhance the city’s emergency preparedness and responsiveness, an official has said.

The city’s chief fire officer, Mr Richard Peterson, told Sunday News last week that the two fire stations would cater for areas that are far from the available fire stations.

Bulawayo has four fire stations situated in Famona, Nketa, Northend and Nkulumane.

Mr Perterson said the city needed at least six fire stations to achieve reasonable cover in terms of disaster preparedness and responsiveness, noting that some areas in the city were difficult to reach within the prescribed emergency response time from the present fire stations.

Emergency response teams are prescribed to react to reported emergencies and arrive at the scene within a maximum of 10 minutes.

Mr Peterson said areas in the city such as Waterford, Magwegwe North, Pumula South, and Cowdray Park were far from the available fire stations such that it takes the city’s fire department about 20 minutes to reach those areas in cases of emergency.

“The ideal situation is that we arrive at emergency scenes within 10 minutes of a report having been made, but that is not the case with certain areas in the city. Some areas take us close to 20 minutes to reach, which means by the time we get there a lot of damage would have been done already.

“Our duty is to save lives and properties and the longer it takes for us to respond to emergencies the more people’s lives will be at risk. We actually want a situation where we take five minutes to get to the scene of a reported emergency,” he said.

Mr Petersen said plans were afoot to build a fire station in Cowdray Park to cater for areas in the western parts of the city that are far from the existing fire station, while the other fire station would be built in Waterford.

He, however, pointed out that availability of resources could hamper their plans but said priority was being given to the Cowdray Park fire station.

“These two should cost us around $60 000 each and we are hoping we will manage to raise the funds. Our priority is the Cowdray Park station because of the number of areas it will cover. If we fail to raise funds for the two, we will concentrate on that one for the moment.

“We have adequate equipment and appliances such that if we were to have the fire station today, we would fully equip it instantly, with the only challenge of course being the availability of trained personnel to man the station.

“Ideally we should have six stations to have some sort of reasonable cover in terms of our ability to respond to emergency in any part of the city within the shortest possible time. Other cities in developed countries have more than 40 fire stations and we also aspire to get there in terms of disaster preparedness,” he said.

Mr Peterson, however, noted that Bulawayo’s emergency preparedness and responsiveness was much better compared to other cities and towns in the country including Harare which did not have adequate equipment to effectively deal with emergencies such as fires and road traffic accidents.

He said BCC was working on capacitating other cities and towns in terms of emergency preparedness, through the local authority’s ties with Operation Florian, a United Kingdom based organisation.

“We have spoken to officials from other cities on capacitating their emergency services departments and they showed willingness, so we are now working on that. Most cities and towns in the country did not have fully fledged emergency services until we requested Operation Florian to come in and assist.

“Quite a number of local authorities have benefited through training of staff, procurement of equipment among other things from the arrangement we have with Operation Florian. We continue working with Operation Florian and our counterparts will continue benefiting,” he said.

Harare City Council, Gweru City Council, Kadoma Town Council, Zvishavane Town Council, Hwange Town Council and Gwanda Town Council, among several other local authorities, have benefited from Bulawayo’s relations with Operation Florian.