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Before there was a Roatan Fire and Rescue, Leland Woods served as vice president of the committee to form it. Woods is also a city councilman. When they got the department running in 2003 and the municipality took it over, Woods was appointed its fire commissioner.
I met Woods next to a sea container at Hybur, the Honduran shipping company that transported the International Fire Relief Mission's donated gear from Miami to Roatan — free of charge (Anderson Trucking Services had moved the gear overland in America, also sans payment). As the Hybur forklift driver loads pallets from the sea container onto the bed of a small delivery truck, Woods tells me the annual budget for Roatan Fire and Rescue is the dollar-equivalent of about $100,000. It's the reason they can pay firefighters only $300 per month.
How much money does the department need to be adequately funded?
About double what it gets now, Woods tells me. What are the chances of getting that or any additional money? Woods shrugs.
The fire commissioner is a political appointment. During the last election, the mayor who appointed Woods lost. Woods' party also lost its majority. He says the new mayor is cooperative, but when there's economic distress in the United States, it is worse in Honduras. The recession has this mayor fiscally cautious, Woods says.
Most of the island's tourist development is along the east side; the plan is to fully develop the west. Woods says the fire department needs two more satellite stations to properly cover the islands; he's offered to donate the land for one of those stations. However, it still comes down to money. Even with the land, the government would have to build and equip a station and staff it.
It takes two small trucks making three trips to move the gear from the shipyard to the fire station. At the station, Roatan's 10 firefighters will unload the boxes without the aid of a forklift. As we're waiting for the first truck to arrive at the shipping yard, IFRM President Ron Gruening shows me a box full of turnout coats and pants. He pulls back a layer of used gear to reveal sparkling clean tan Globe bunkers. A dealer had donated them, all new. Gruening says that he's learned to hide the new stuff under a layer or two of used and dirty gear. Someone in customs is less likely to steal the used stuff and not likely to dig to the middle of the box where the new gear is hidden.
In addition, Rosenbauer kicked in new European-design helmets and firefighting gloves. There also are brand-new MSA SCBA tanks and masks. All tolled, there are six sets of new turnouts — save for the boots, which are all used — to compliment the used gear.
One item that isn't making the trip from the shipping yard to the fire station this morning is a 1976 engine donated by Norfolk, Conn. It is an old truck and may not have the wow appeal that new bunkers will have. But the Hartford chief assures us it is in tiptop shape. Given the area the department must cover and the age and condition of its apparatus, the Hartford engine may prove valuable. The reason we cannot deliver it, Woods says, is because it lacks the proper documentation to have it released from customs. Again, he shrugs. He trying to get the matter cleared up so it can be delivered by next week. That night, the local television news shows a family that lost all its possession to a recent house fire.
We follow the last truckload of gear from the shipyard to the fire station.
The fire station is a 2-story rectangle stucco building with living quarters on the second floor. At the far end of the main floor is a room with one piece of exercise equipment and several hotplates on tables. At the other end is an office and a meeting room that is about 12 by 15. The meeting room is also the dispatch center. The department's three apparatus and two ambulances are parked outside under carport-style roof; the only protection from the corrosive sea air.
With the trucks now unloaded the firefighters pour over large shipping boxes of gear. They are like kids at Christmas, but not greedy, obnoxious kids. These are happy, grateful kids. Watching this play out, I realize that despite the lack of government support, that many look younger than 18, and the sub-poverty wages, these guys are firefighters. They are passionate firefighters excited by the bounty of new gear.
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