The National Fire Service has had its hands full with wildfires this dry season. Many times, they simply don't have the resources to respond to some of them.
And that's why when the Taiwanese Embassy donated a brand new fire truck to the Belize City Council, and CitCo wasted no time in handing it over to the Fire Department.
Mayor Bernard Wagner told us more about this partnership today.
Bernard Wagner, Mayor of Belize City
"This is a testament to the great relationship that Belize continues to have and the friendship with Taiwan, we share a sister city relationship out of Kaohsiung and so the embassy and the government of Taiwan donated this firetruck to the city, as you know, we are not mandated to really be responsible for fires so we in turn redirected that gift to the National Fire Service."
"It's a gift where the city benefits especially in terms of the, what you call, added value that it will bring to the fire service here in Belize City, we know we've been having many bush fires, we've been having those types of other fires in those urban areas, we need to be able to respond quickly and having this gifted to us and we in turn back to the fire service is a win-win situation."
"I could recall, and the fire chief spoke about it, during the aftermath of hurricane Lisa, there was this push of mud in the downtown area, the city, and we were able to call on the fire service to really assist us in really getting that mud off those streets and it requires a fire truck to get that done so we were thankful for that."
