Despite not receiving a large number of fire related reports so far for the year 2021, the Virgin Islands Fire and Rescue Service is anticipating that they will receive approximately north of 700 calls by year end, with most medically related.
This is according to Chief Fire Officer Zebalon McLean who made the statement during a recent interview with 284News.
He said that most calls received are not fire related, but they fall within the spectrum of the many other responsibilities of the Virgin Islands Fire and Rescue.
“We have calls every single day. By the time the year has ended, we would have amassed over 600-700 calls. So while we may not have a lot of fires per say, we do have a lot of calls. The reason we do not have a lot of fires fortunately, is because of our relatively small size. It doesn’t take a long time for us to get to the scene of a fire to stop it before it spreads. It doesn’t take a long time for persons to realise that there’s something leading to a fire for them to deal with it,” he said.
He added, “But then we have a plethora of different things that we have to attend to. We attend to medical calls, we attend to various rescues, we attend to special services, to request for all manner of different services. Anything from liquor license inspections to inspections of homes that have just been constructed to newly designed office buildings. So, we are kept pretty busy.”
Looking to implement EMT initiative
Chief Fire Officer McLean said that as a result of the large volume of medical calls and responses, his department has been aiming to implement an EMT initiative which would help to benefit the territory.
“The majority of calls you would get would be for medical response. We are currently trying to implement an EMT initiative, as I’m sure many persons know, most of the fire services around the world have EMTs in their own ambulances. This serves to assist the medical services when it comes to retrieving, stabilizing and transporting medical victims. So the BVI should not be far behind,” he explained.
McLean said the second most calls are for rescues while fire related calls are the third most calls received.