AFTER 130 years fighting fires, the Jamaica Fire Brigade has had only one fatality amongst its ranks — a feat it says is attributable to two factors.

“The risks are there but our firefighters are trained and our structures are well built,” Senior Deputy Superintendent Alrick Hacker, first in command for fire prevention at the Brigade, told members of the Jamaica Observer news team during the weekly Monday Exchange forum.

The senior deputy superintendent was responding to queries about the entity’s safety record and the provision of counselling for traumatised firefighters.

“Only one in our history,” he said, noting that this could be attributed to some extent to the country’s building practices.

“How we construct our buildings and infrastructure, it doesn’t make fighting the fires that much of a hazard as it would be, for example, in the [United] States where most buildings are compartmentalised with a lot of insulation and stuff like that,” he noted.

Of late, he said the department has seen two deaths — one involving a firefighter who died in a motor vehicle accident on the way to his unit while another succumbed to cancer.

According to information from the department’s website, the fire service was established in October 1871 with the formation of the Kingston Fire Brigade to satisfy the need for a trained and equipped fire service to be responsive to growth in

housing, industrial

and commercial developments in Kingston. This followed a spate of large fires

which had ravaged sections of the city’s commercial sectors.

Operating from Sutton Street in downtown Kingston, the brigade was then comprised of a horse-drawn steam pump and a small number of men under the command of a Scotsman –Alexander McFarlane. As the city grew, the need for wider fire coverage gave rise to the first sub-station, Half-Way-Tree, which opened in the late 1930s.

In keeping pace with the developments, a new headquarters, York Park, was opened in November 1944 housing at the time 69 men, six firefighting vehicles and a utility car. Operating under the aegis of the Kingston and St Andrew Fire Brigade (KSA) Act, the unit was primarily for “…the protection of life and property from the ravages of fire within the limits of the Corporate Area…”.

The rural parishes in the island were not without their own defence against fire hazards and under the Parochial Fire Brigade Act, 12 parish fire brigades were established at various times in St Catherine, 1933; St Elizabeth, 1934; Portland, 1936; St James, 1942; St Mary, 1948; St Ann, 1951; Trelawny and Hanover, 1957; St Thomas, Clarendon and Manchester, 1958; and Westmoreland in 1961.

— Alicia Dunkley-Willis