A fire which devastated two wooden homes on a property belonging to
local fisherman and local Yamaha outboard engine repair man, Earl Smith,
Sr. (better known as Munuch!) lit up the Caye Caulker skies yesterday
around noon.

There are a cluster of wooden homes in the area. Sad to say, one
building was completely demolished, and an adjacent building was partly
demolished, both buildings belonging to Munuch. My sister's home
(Sharon's home) sits on the property next to where the fire was.

If it was not such a tragic situation that occasioned it, I would be
happy to be saying that Caye Caulker folks and tourists alike behaved
extraordinarily wonderful. No sooner had the alarm bells of the fire
truck sounded, that ordinary folks and tourists came from everywhere to
contain what could easily have been a catastrophic fire. There are at
least four other buildings in very close proximity that could easily
also have been destroyed. Thankfully, they were not.

By the second, men and women from everywhere came out to help, passing
buckets and even tin cans and garbage cans of water to contain the fire
- even helping quite distraught neighbors to move out their belongings
from the area where the fire was as a preventive measure - while the one
local fire truck concentrated on making sure the fire didn't spread.
The Caye Caulker Fire Department performed beautifully, as did all the
dozens of volunteer fire fighters, and I will say that I was very proud
to witness the outpouring of assistance.

At the head of one of the water hoses was fireman Scott Dreamer from
Indiana, who is a tourist. He is an Indianan fire fighter and
paramedic. There are also dozens of other local folks that jumped right
in to assist with manning the hoses. It was quite touching. All in
all, I would surmise that there were at least one hundred people helping
at the scene, which resulted in the fire being minimized as quickly as
possible. I shudder to think what would have happened had everyone who
did come out to help not showed up to render assistance. It made me
very proud to be a part of this community.

Four families were affected by the fire.

Wendy Auxillou de la Fuente

What a wonderful story, and I am not surprised.

great community spirit. Sorry to hear about those 4 families, I hope things work out ok for them.