ARTICLE - BOYNTON FIRE CHIEF

BOYNTON FIRE CHIEF WANTS TO HELP BOLSTER HAITIAN CITY'S READINESS
(Palm Beach Post) - By Eliot Kleinberg

BOYNTON BEACH — This city has about 68,000 residents, six firetrucks and two backup trucks.

Its new sister city of Les Cayes, Haiti, has about the same population, but jams it into a much smaller space. It has one truck.

Ray Carter wants to fix that. For starters, he envisions something dating to America's founding: volunteer fire departments.

"They have established neighborhoods," Carter, Boynton's interim fire chief, said last month. "They look after each other."

In December, officials of the city about 100 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince came to Boynton Beach to sign "sister city" documents and meet with Boynton Beach staff to share ideas.

Carter said it quickly became clear that in Les Cayes, "fire safety is not high on the priority list. There really isn't much of a standard in place."

Of course, fires don't care.

Les Cayes has been plagued by storms and floods, which, paradoxically, can cause fires, such as when lightning strikes or when water gets into electrical equipment.

And the January 2010 earthquake sparked many fires with little in the way of people or equipment to fight them.

The nation's tax structure also limits what Les Cayes can collect, Carter said.

"Any emergencies, from a medical standpoint, are handled strictly by the hospital," Carter said. "There's no ambulance service whatsoever. If somebody has a car, they get that car and someone drives them to a hospital."

He said none of the officials was sure how old the firetruck was.

His question to his Haitian counterparts: "What risk is your community willing to suffer through? At what point do you decide, 'We're going to move forward'?"

But, he said, "this isn't going to happen overnight. "You need a long-range plan of, 'Here's what we want our city to look like 10 years from now.' "

Working in a city pinching its pennies, Carter knew help would come not in money, but in time and expertise.

Carter said he'd consider going to Les Cayes and perhaps taking Creole-speaking firefighters.

Carter said even training similar to what volunteers get in Boynton Beach's CERT program "would be a good start. Basic first aid. At least use a fire extinguisher. There's nothing, really; they have nothing right now."

He also would look for surplus fire equipment or vehicles that could be donated to Les Cayes.