While the morning started out sunny, by noon on Tuesday the sky was a threatening gray and rain lashed the island of Caye Caulker.
The stormy weather seemed to sum up the mood of the 2,500 residents of the village, and most particularly, the owner of Costa Maya Cabanas resort near the Split, Julian Rosado, who could only watch as much of his property and hard work literally went up in flames before his eyes earlier on Tuesday morning.
That fire could have been prevented, a number of village residents told us, if their local two-man fire service had been better prepared to face the danger, instead of falling down at the worst possible moment.
Sometime around 12:30 a.m. that Tuesday morning, a wooden 2-room bungalow on the property of the Ocean Palm Royale Hotel apparently caught fire. Before long, it spread to the property of Costa Maya, where two split-level wooden buildings, housing four rooms in total, collapsed, before it jumped to the Costa Maya warehouse, then in turn, to a small wooden house belonging to an unknown owner, and finally, to a large two-storey elevated wooden house with concrete piles.
Ocean Palm proprietor and tour operator, Efrain Novelo, told Amandala that two guests, said to be from Denmark, were staying in his cabana where the fire started, but escaped unhurt. Amazingly, despite the size of the fire, no injuries were reported to anyone staying in either Ocean Palm or Costa Maya.
It was neighbors from the immediate area who first spotted and spread the word about the fire to Costa Maya's owner, Julian Rosado, and his sister Ruby, who were awakened from their sleep just before 1:00 a.m.
Ruby Rosado told Amandala that she is grateful for the assistance provided by her neighbors, who formed a bucket brigade and used whatever else they had - personal fire extinguishers, pumps and garden hoses - to help fight the conflagration.
But the local Fire Service received low marks from villagers for being ill-prepared. The Fire Service on Caye Caulker has just two firefighters assigned, with a brand new fire truck, but only one water pump. Only one firefighter was on duty last night, we have confirmed; the other was off the island tending to family issues.
"When the fireman finally showed up, he kept pumping and pumping, but the pump wouldn't start. I think that up to now, they must still be trying to start it," said a humorless Porfilio Guzman, one of those who helped fight the fire, to reporters at the scene on Tuesday morning.
"I got no assistance from the Fire Department, none at all. I even asked if they had ladders to maybe climb and get water inside, but nothing from them at all. I hope the Fire Chief gets rid of them," Ruby Rosado added.
"I give the Fire Department zero for their efforts, and if you ask anyone else that was out there, they will tell you the same," Efrain Novelo summed up.
According to the villagers, the lone firefighter on duty failed to respond immediately when called - despite being only five minutes away, no one was at the station responding to what villagers say were numerous calls made, and desperate residents resorted to calling the Caye Caulker and San Pedro Police Departments, who in turn informed Belize City police, who then called their colleagues on Cleghorn Street, who then reached the Caye Caulker Fire Station.
Furthermore, when he (the fireman) arrived on the scene, close to an hour and a half after the fire started, the water pump, as explained above, would not start, and a resident known only as "Dorsey" was pressed into service with his pump, all while the fire raged.
Many residents also say that when Caye Caulker police located the firefighter who was supposed to be on duty, he was at a house behind the airstrip, drinking, and went to the scene, if not in an inebriated condition, then nearly so.
This last charge is particularly distressing, but according to area residents, it is not the first time the Fire Department there has proven to be unfit. Indeed, in the pages of this newspaper (see story on page 3 of Amandala #2371 for Sunday, October 18, 2009) we reported that the Fire Department was accused by the local branch of the Belize Tourism Industry Association (BTIA) of late and inappropriate response to fires and arson attempts on the island earlier this year.
In addition, residents charged today that the two local firefighters have been seen using the truck as their personal plaything, running it around the island on various jaunts.
San Pedro firefighters, for their part, responded around 6:00 a.m. Tuesday, long after the fire had been put out, according to Ruby Rosado.
On the allegations of drunkenness, National Fire Service training officer Kenneth Mortis, who is leading the investigation, would only tell assembled press on Tuesday afternoon that the matter is being investigated.
Mortis' boss, Fire Chief John Briggs, speaking to Amandala this morning, said that the fireman was at home when he was found, and was not drunk. His home is a mile from the fire scene.
The first logged call to the Caye Caulker fire station, located next to the police station, was at 2:23 a.m., easily almost an hour and a half after the reported start of the fire, and the truck still took 15 minutes to get to the scene over what Briggs calls "poor roads" on Caye Caulker.
Asked to explain the delay, Mortis reminded the press that, "we can only respond if we have been informed of an incident beforehand."
(Note: The number to reach the Fire Service in any emergency, it bears repeating, is 90, not 911, which reaches the police. Alternatively, the Fire Service can be reached by standard listings in the telephone directory.)
As for the cause, the Fire Service thinks "negligent use of a mosquito coil" by the Danish tourists at Ocean Palm Royale Hotel may have led to the fire. The tourists gave statements today to police and fire investigators. Briggs told us arson and electricity problems have been ruled out, but that investigations continue.
Costa Maya, Julian Rosado estimates, he lost some $400,000 in property, most of it newly installed. Haywood Curry, the owner of the elevated house, lost some $320,000 in household goods, and the value of the Ocean Palm cabana and goods inside tallied up to $40,000. With other miscellaneous figures, the preliminary estimate from Amandala's calculations is $786,000 in property lost this morning.
Worse, none of the properties affected by the fire, we are told, were insured.
Briggs, while reiterating that the Fire Service does not tolerate misbehavior such as that being alleged by the villagers, pointed out that Caye Caulker has no trained volunteer firefighters and that efforts to establish a cadre of volunteers have been unsuccessful. He hopes the disaster makes people think more seriously about coming out to the twice-weekly meetings, or "parades", which feature instructions in fire-fighting techniques.
Investigations are almost done, and the owners of Costa Maya prepare to rebound from the devastating events of the early Tuesday morning conflagration.
Amandala
Ambergris Caye 
AmbergrisCaye.com