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Ted Smith, Fire Chief, Belize Nat'l Fire Service
"A 10 minutes to 1, the department received and responded to a structural fire at #14 Glenn Street. On arrival, 2 structures were found on fire. One was fully engulfed in flames, the fire was already in the free burning phase and the open stage. A second structure located east of that structure had fire coming out of the attic area, upper story, which is another 2 story wooden structure. The department went into operation and contained and extinguished the fire. At the conclusion of fire fight, three 2 story wooden structure were totally destroyed by the fire."

Reporter
"So, this fire, what do you think it was? I know the investigation isn't done, but what are you guys suspecting?"

Ted Smith
"Well we are not suspecting anything. We will let the investigation lead us to the cause of that fire."

Reporter
"Okay a lot of neighbors, or a lot of people in the area were saying that there is an abandoned lot. A lot of people go there to maybe smoke and they don't light it out properly. Do you think that that could have been a cause?"

Ted Smith
"Preliminary investigation revealed that the structure was unoccupied at the time."

Reporter
"So people said that you guys came but then the fire truck ran out of water. You had to go back and then come back which led to the fire spreading. What's your comment on that? I know the fire truck can only hold so much water and there's not much places to go other than the sea."

Ted Smith
"The magnitude of fire that we arrived there to meet, overwhelming the response capacity of the department in the initial stage. We did not have enough water onboard those 2 units to combat that fire. Our immediate action was to protect the adjacent structures as much as possible. After the water was exhausted, both units were deployed to try to resupply the scene with water. It takes longer than one would've want within the department for the scene to be resupplied but once the scene was resupplied, the fire was then contained before it can spread down and destroy any other structure. If you go out on the scene and you can see where the fire burns and where the fire stops, you will notice that the other structure was extremely close and the fire did not burn those other structures that were extremely close. It is because, once the scene was resupplied with water, supplementary water came back, we were able to effectively fire fight and contain the fire before it spread on to other structures."

Fire Chief Smith also mentioned that the wooden structures were very old causing the fire to burn more quickly.