JFB Expanding ‘Mek Wi Fix It’ Fire Prevention Campaign

The Jamaica Fire Brigade’s (JFB) ‘Mek Wi Fix It’ campaign is being expanded to focus on, among other things, bush fire prevention.

This is against the background of an increase in the occurrence of bush fires and resulting casualties, according to JFB statistics for 2018.

Senior JFB Deputy Superintendent for Fire Prevention and Public Relations Officer, Emeleo Ebanks, cited one primary factor.

“Last year was one of the hottest years we have had on record across the world and this would have impacted, certainly in the summer months, the number of bush fires that we saw,” he told JIS News.

Mr. Ebanks also noted an increase in the number of electrical and structural fires occurring, which he attributed to, among other things, gang activities and violence.

Consequently, he advised that the ‘Mek Wi Fix It’ programme has been tweaked to address these, adding that public sensitisation will be heightened.

The JFB Officer said there has been positive feedback to the initiative since its launch, after six children perished in fires in January 2018.

“We got very good response from that programme and we saw where the numbers were trending down. We have tweaked that intervention programme to now include [among other things] how to deal with and prevent bush fires. We will be [expanding] this programme to address the other ills that we are seeing,” Mr. Ebanks indicated.

He advised that the JFB continues to work with the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) in various farming communities to educate farmers on the dangers of the slash-and-burn land preparation method and provide them with alternatives.

He assured that the JFB remains committed to its vision of providing a citizen-centred fire and rescue service and initiating various fire prevention programmes and interventions islandwide.