FIREFIGHTERS DID ALL that was humanly possible to save the lives of the six young women who perished in the Campus Trendz fire in Tudor Street, The City earlier this month.
Reeling under widespread public condemnation over the handling of the September 3 tragedy, Chief Fire Officer Wilfred Marshall said the attacks had damaged the morale of the Fire Department.
“There were fire officers who actually cried because they were on the scene working and they gave of their best. They felt very hurt when all these negative comments were coming at them as if no effort was made to reach the victims in the fire,” he told the WEEKEND NATION in an exclusive interview yesterday.
Marshall said some of his firefighters placed their own lives on the line, reaching as much as 25 feet to 30 feet within the raging inferno.
“The impression coming from members of the public that the firefighters didn’t make any effort to save [the victims] was far from the truth.”
Describing the blaze as one of the toughest he had experienced in his 35-year career, Marshall said, “We were fighting against a compact building, there wasn’t a window that we could have burst. Normally in other buildings you would see us burst windows or create openings to allow gases or smoke to come out, but there was no opportunity there,” he said.
The fire chief said their eventual entry at the back of the building took exceptionally long since it was a “soft-stone” wall which was difficult to penetrate.
He dismissed suggestions that the firemen should have gone through the roof.
“Once you go through the roof and create an opening you are sending the fire to the roof of the building,” he pointed out.
