Public urged to guard against fires

According to the latest council’s Fire and Ambulance Services report, November 2011 alone recorded the highest number of fire incidents with property worth $541 000 destroyed compared to October’s $ 95 000.
In May property worth $528 000 was lost to fire and in March fire destroyed $380 000 worth of property.
Fire destroyed property worth $126 000 in August and the figure increased to $185 000 the following month.
Between January and November property worth about $2 million was destroyed.
Bulawayo chief fire officer, Mr Richard Peterson said most fires were sparked off by electrical faults while some started from discarded lit materials.
Children playing with lit matches and candles also started some of the fires.
About 45 percent of fire incidents occurred in the high-density suburbs in the month of November while 58 percent were recorded from the medium low-density suburbs in October.
Meanwhile, Mr Peterson said his team was conducting fire awareness programmes in different parts of the city in a bid to reduce property losses.
He also said his unit was working closely with community leaders, churches and disaster management trainees at local tertiary institutions as part of efforts to reduce fire incidents.
Mr Peterson, however, expressed concern at the shortage of manpower and inadequate equipment especially in dealing with natural disasters.
“We have a challenge of inadequate resources to deal with natural disasters and continuous breakdown of major appliances.
“The other challenge is of officers in charge of emergency vehicles driving themselves to fires and special services due to a critical shortage of drivers,” said Mr Paterson.