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There was chaos and confusion in Belize City this morning when a butane truck stopped on Albert Street between King and Prince Streets and smoke started streaming out form the tanker area. It looked very scary, but fortunately it was only a disaster simulation. It all played out just a block from our studio and we were on the scene.

Jules Vasquez Reporting,
The simulated event was a butane leak. According to the script, this BWEL butane truck had a ruptured hose on Albert Street at 9:20 in the morning which was releasing butane, and this we stress is not butane – but for the purpose of this simulation, it is being treated as that.

Ted Smith, Assistant Fire Chief
“We simulated today a bobtail liquid petroleum gas or what you call butane truck had an accident, a two inch pipe break, the pipe that run between the pipe and the pump discharging a massive quantity of the product into the atmosphere.”

Whether real or simulated, the scene created a fair measure of chaos on Albert Street; all the onlookers, shop owners and office workers were taken off guard. And this is the scene they got, a fog of smoke in the air and a man laid out on the ground apparently injured and unconscious.

Ted Smith,
“During the breakage of the pipe, the operator or the driver of the truck attempted to close the valve and got burnt on both his hands and later overcome by the gas and collapsed.”

Probably the only clue onlookers had that it wasn’t a real disaster was the steady presence of assessors who were evaluating the performance of disaster responders. When the fire team arrived their job was to contain, control and which meant dousing the area with water - including the injured man. Store shutters had to be closed as the fire team rushed away the injured man whose injuries no doubt got worse when… (fire fighters dropping man on the ground.) They carried him away but it seems you can safely count that among lessons learned that running backwards across a hose strewn street – umm, maybe not such a good idea.

Ted Smith,
“The Fire Department came in, effect a rescue whilst trying to shut down the valve. They did shut down the valve.”

The fire team continued to cool the tank with supercharged spray. At the end after about half an hour the simulation was over and it was time for the hoses and the lessons to be gathered.

Phillip Willoughby, CEMO
“I know it was only an exercise and people might have took it a bit lightly but I am of the view that the shutters should have come down, no one knew what was taking place out here, so I would have closed off the business and stop completely the free flow of pedestrians on both sides of the sidewalk and so forth and then caution tape the area.”

Ted Smith,
“There are some challenges that manifested itself during this exercise. We will have what we call a critique to analyze the situation, the response, the deployment, the multi-agency approach, the coordination, and this will be analyzed now and adjustments where necessary will be made to improve on our performance.”

Jules Vasquez,
“Is it a matter of inexperience or ineptitude or incompetence?”

Ted Smith,
“I nuh aware of no poor performance. I do aware of some challenges that manifested themselves. This is the purpose of these exercise to analyze and assess our operational readiness.”

And while it was a test, the risk is real.

BWEL Rep.
“For it to have ignited, you wouldn’t want to see what would have happened? For example if this leak would have been very massive, like I said we would have to let everyone close down their equipment, everything like that to avoid a possible explosion.”

Jules Vasquez,
“What is the likelihood of something like this ever happening?”

Ted Smith,
“There is always that chance that it can happen. It happened before, some years ago a similar truck discharged approximately about 1400 gallons of liquefied petroleum gas in the air on Barrack Road just by the town clock. No one was hurt but thank God for that.”

Again, we stress, everything you just saw was part of a simulation, it was only a test. Well, everything apart from the firemen tumbling down with the man they were carrying – that, that was painfully real.