HGP Nightly News – In a country that just hours ago watched a 57-room apartment building in Alberttown burn to the ground in under an hour, the news from the Guyana Fire Service today offers a rare and genuinely encouraging counterpoint. Fire calls across the country dropped by a remarkable 34 per cent over the past year and Fire Chief Gregory Wickham says that number is no accident.
Delivering remarks at the opening of the Guyana Fire Service Annual Officers’ Conference on Wednesday, held under the theme “Fire Reduction Through Technological Innovation and Enhanced Community Engagement,” Wickham laid out a picture of a service that has fundamentally changed how it approaches its work.
In previous years, he noted, the Fire Service was being crushed under the weight of the calls it was receiving. Today, that tide has turned. “The Guyana Fire Service over last year managed to have a 34% decline in fire calls responded to over the previous year. In the years before this, they were overwhelmed by the number of calls,” he said.
The driving force behind that decline, Wickham was clear, is not simply better firefighting, it is better prevention. The service has pushed deeper into communities across the country, engaging directly with the people most at risk and educating them about fire safety before emergencies occur.
The results have been vivid and tangible. In several instances, Wickham revealed, firefighters have arrived at scenes only to find that residents had already put out the fire themselves, a sign that the public education campaign is genuinely changing behaviour on the ground. “The reduction is a direct indication that the fire service has been engaged with those persons who are using fire,” he said.
The reach of that engagement, Wickham stressed, is total and non-negotiable. Every community in Guyana is a target, and none will be left behind. “None is exempted, none is left out,” he said, a commitment that takes on added weight as Guyana’s rapid development continues to create new risks, new buildings and new concentrations of people and assets that need protecting.
That development context was never far from Wickham’s remarks. As investment pours into Guyana from both local and international sources, the Fire Chief said the service has a responsibility that extends beyond protecting citizens. Businesses, investors and the infrastructure of a growing nation must all be kept safe.
“We must ensure that those persons who are coming into our country and making great development, we must ensure that their businesses remain safe, so there will be no loss,” he said, framing fire safety not just as a public service but as a foundation for economic confidence.
To sustain and build on these gains, Wickham confirmed that firefighters are continuing to receive training to keep the service sharp and fit for purpose as it embraces new technology and deepens its community partnerships. The Annual Officers’ Conference, which brings together the service’s senior ranks to review performance and map out the year ahead, signals that the momentum is being treated not as a milestone to celebrate but as a baseline to surpass.
