Why this project?
If you knew that there would be nobody to come to your home to put out a fire, would you still cook? Or turn on lights, enjoy a nice candle, or even just feel safe living and sleeping in your home? Unfortunately for the people of the Placencia Peninsula, this could very well be their reality. Currently there is only one fire truck serving a population of 3,500-5,000 people, depending on the season, along the 16 miles peninsula.
Luckily, the following two fire trucks arrived February 2021.
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| Stuphen HS-2081 Fire Truck | Chevrolet C6500 Fire Truck |
The costs of the two firetrucks (acquisition, refurbishing, fees, etc.) of ~US$25k where covered through the generosity of David Kafka (profile), a real estate broker (1stchoicebelize.com) and a volunteer firefighter in Placencia .
Believe in Belize, Placencia Village Council, Rotary Club of Placencia, and the Placencia volunteer fire department, collaborated in managing the tasks involved in bringing the firetrucks to Placencia.
On January 18th, 2021 the Fire Trucks arrived in Belize City. The pictures below were graciously provided by Tropic Air.
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We would like to recognize Hugo Moguel of the Rotary Club of Belize Sunrise and James York of Global Gear Initiative for their help navigating governmental procedures.
We are very thankful to Larry Hall of the Joanna Fire Department in South Carolina for the "hands-on" work in performing the inspections, getting repairs done, and numerous other tasks. We are thankful too for Jeff Madden of the Awendaw Fire Department and his team at his company, Safari Towing, for taking our trucks from Joanna to Charleston, SC.
We also wish to express our gratitude to the US Department of Defense, Security Cooperation Agency, for the approval of our Denton Program application and for the US Air Force for transporting the firetrucks to Belize (https://hatransportation.ohasis.org), and for the US State Department / US Embassy Belmopan for managing the international coordination between the US and Belize.
We also would like to thank Roman Bayrock of the Rotary Club of Edmonton Riverview for sharing his expertise about the Denton program process.
