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And from Shipyard to Neuland; it's a Mennonite village in no-man's-land, somewhere between Corozal and Orange Walk at the end of a road that the Neulanites had to cut through the jungle themselves. And on Tuesday night when a tragic explosion occurred in that community, the blaring sirens of a firetruck didn't respond, because the firetrucks in both northern districts might both have believed that the village is far out of their jurisdiction.
And that confusion never even got the opportunity to be clarified because Neuland is the type of community that doesn't call the authorities, instead their modus operandi is to deal with village happenings on their own - even when a 10 month old and a 3 year old died in a major explosion. That remote-ness and the mennonite way may be why neither fire department has responded to the Sawatsky family's tragic explosion. Here's how Belize City's station supervisor Kenneth Mortis explained the circumstances to us.
Kenneth Mortis, Station Supervisor
"The practice behind the explosion from what we have gathered it was an alleged pouring of liquid flammable contents from one container to the next with the use of a lighter as an open flame for visibility which is something we try to preach or practice against, you know, it's, it's the law of physics that you don't have an open flame with flammable liquid. I really don't know how that ended up happening again that is another tragic situation.""
"Unfortunately maybe because of the location the fire department never was informed of that fire, and we never responded to it but I would like to take this opportunity to continue to remind the general populace of the importance of being safe and the importance of using the right tool to get the job done."
"I am not going to dodge this one if we at the end of the day if the national fire service receives the call of an official request we will partake with the police department to come to a conclusion to this type of emergency and this type of train situation that we face, however, like we said the request has to be made before we just invade into one's territory. The police is fully aware of what went down. I do believe they might give us a call to lead in to the cause of the fire from a fire perspective if it's a nature where somebody needs to be charged then once both organizations decicisvley come up with a cause and origin then we will see if any charges need to be levied on anybody."
In the past three months, 5 children under 5 have perished in 3 separate fires.
