SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — Its delivery capacity is only 125 gallons of water, and it is so small that it is carried around in a pickup utility vehicle.

But experts say a firefighting skid unit contained in a pickup truck, complete with pumping accessories — which was formally delivered to the St Elizabeth Fire Department recently — can have a significant impact on fighting bush fires in rugged, hard-to-reach terrain and farming areas.

“The skid unit can be easily loaded on to the back of a pickup and be driven to a location in quick time,” Stewart Beckford, commissioner of the Jamaica Fire Brigade, told his audience at a handover ceremony at the Santa Cruz Fire Station.

“It will move a lot quicker than the big unit, so it is also a rapid-response unit, so to speak,” he said.

He later told journalists that in countering bush fires, a major challenge for large, conventional firefighting units was narrow, poor road surfaces, and in some cases, “lack of roads”. In such circumstances, traditional firefighting units were significantly slowed and sometimes prevented altogether from getting close to a blaze.

Beckford said that even when larger fire units could gain access to fires eventually, the prior arrival of the skid unit would help.

“All fires start small, so the idea is to get to the fire [with the skid unit] while it is in its incipient stage and before it spreads further…,” he said.

The skid unit was bought through a partnership with the Meteorological Service of Jamaica (Met Office), with funding from the Caribbean Development Bank, as part of a drive to more effectively control and put out bush fires.

The handover of the skid unit is in sync with a project started earlier this year to deliver backpack firefighting equipment to farmers in Flagaman, south St Elizabeth. A large fire which engulfed 200 acres of farmland in and around Flagaman in August of last year made headlines.

Beckford noted that, despite heavy rainfall across the island in recent months, 2020 “has been a record-breaking year for us [Jamaica Fore Brigade] in terms of bush fires. Last year was bad, but this year even worse, notwithstanding rain September through November. Earlier in the year we were overwhelmed [by bush fires] at times… Having these skid units [and] backpacks [are] all part of the direction we are taking, in looking to see how we can not only equip the fire brigade to respond but also for farmers to help themselves…”

The fire chief said traditionally wet parishes at the eastern end of the country, such as Portland, St Mary, St Thomas, “where we never used to see so many bush fires”, had more than their fair share this year.

He blamed most of the fires on human behaviour, including ‘slash and burn’ farming techniques and the careless disposal of cigarette butts and flammable materials.

Beckford urged those who may feel the need to light fires, for whatever reason, to seek guidance from the fire department.

He said that up to the end of October, there were 808 fire calls in St Elizabeth, 364 of which were bush fires, with 44 on farmlands.

— Garfield Myers