Authorities are investigating the cause of the attempted murder. fire which, early this Tuesday, affected the headquarters of the National Emergency and Security Assistance System 9-1-1in the Metropolitan Areaaccording to the executive director of the institution, Colonel Randolfo Rijo.
According to Rijo, the official report of the competent body to establish what caused the accident.
“Right now we are waiting for the report from the Research Office of the Fire brigadewhich has assigned personnel to investigate what happened. However, we can preliminarily observe that the fire It started on a ceiling in the office area, where an air conditioner is installed. That is, what we can speculatively predict is that perhaps there was a short circuit or something electrical that failed, and that could have caused the fire. But we have to wait for official report of the Fire brigade to tell us what happened,” Rijo explained.
- The director indicated that the emergency unit dispatch area was totally affected.
“That is basically 60% of the first floor of the building, which is the part that is, let’s say, on fire, and which is an important part of what the emergency coordinationbecause it is where the emergency units of the different response agencies are dispatched,” he said.
Randolfo Rijowho explained that the emergency protocols and the evacuation plan of the staff.
“We received an alert at 2:18 in the morning from the operating system that told us presence of smokewhich activated the process and the evacuation plan of personnel, proceeding to evacuate all personnel,” he indicated.
More than one hundred employees were evacuated
At the time of fire They were working between 100 and 110 collaboratorswho were evacuated in its entirety. During the event, six people had to be transported due to smoke and gas inhalation, who are stable and remain under medical observation.
Rijo reported that the fire caused a temporary decrease of the operations of emergency coordination for a few minutes, while the contingency plan institutional.
“This caused the operations of emergency coordination will decrease for a few minutes, before activating the contingency planwhich implies that, in the event that one of the 9-1-1 headquarters fails, the another headquarters assumes control,” he explained.
Operations moved to Santiago
He indicated that the 9-1-1 system operates with two headquarters with the capacity to coordinate the country’s emergencies, one located in the Santiago province and another in the National District.
In that sense, he pointed out that the emergencies from Baní to Punta Cana were coordinated from the affected headquarters, therefore, in accordance with the contingency plana delegation of responsibilities was made to the Santiago headquarters.
“Currently, as it is in our contingency planthe Santiago headquarters is now in charge of all emergencies that occur in the country, while this headquarters returns and begins to carry out its functions,” he noted.
The director assured that the operations of emergency coordination They are developing normally from Santiago, which has full capacity to coordinate all emergencies at the national level.
