Mahogany Heights Village Receives Firefighting Equipment Donation for Enhanced Climate Resilience

Residents of Mahogany Heights Village are now equipped to tackle fires in their community. Today, the village’s council received a donation of firefighting and water storage equipment valued at over twenty thousand dollars. The donation was procured by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) through the UK Government’s Biodiverse Landscapes Fund. The venture seeks to improve the village’s ability to tackle wildfires and its climate resiliency as the growing threat of climate change increases. The village’s Chairman, Jermaine Sanchez, underscored the importance of the initiative and how it will benefit the community. 

Jermaine Sanchez, Chairman, Mahogany Heights Village: “Fires have been very prevalent in our community. As you know the dry season is now upon us. We have had instances in the past whereby residents have lost homes, all their belongings, their life time savings, because of small fires. We know that the ability for the fire department to respond to use quickly, maybe my definition of quickly may mean ten to fifteen minutes, they’re all the way in Belmopan. We have had forest fires, we have had what we call bush fire that have led into larger things and that in itself gives us a sense of security that we can at least hold over until the real firefighters are here.”

Reporter: What was the community’s response like before this ? 

Jermaine Sanchez, Chairman, Mahogany Heights Village: “Well as I mentioned I recall one of the moments we had what we call the bucket brigade whenever there was a fire and we would pul buckets water together, form a line and yes that helped a bit however you know when it comes to a bucket fatigue comes in, the ability to move the water to the exact location. So when the community heard about this and actually the community was an integral part of this consultation there were many ideas that came up such as for example providing medicine, doing a cover over the basketball court because it’s all related to climate change and climate resilience and then the lightbulb hit “hey we need something to protect us against fire.” The community was very happy.. Their input made the difference as the Director of the British High Commission mentioned. The community was all a part of this.”

WCS Country Director, Nicole Auil Gomez, spoke about how the project came to fruition and how it will benefit the rural community under threat from climate change. 

Nicole Auil Gomez, WCS Country Director: “We are really grateful for the opportunity to work closely with the Mahogany Heights Community and that’s really because we have built a strong relationship, our team some are here, some who aren’t including Dr.Boris Arevalo, Jamie Urbina, have been working very closely with Mr.Sanchez and Ms. Raquel from the Mahogany Heights Village Council for a few years now and we’ve been doing really working towards something that can be beneficial for the community and this is being supported by. The UK Biodiverse Landscapes Fund and the process that took us to get here was really the community developing their own climate smart plan that would be suitable for them here in the village. Our team that responds to fires are the ranger and our manager our lead Yajiro Urbina. Yes whenever there’s a fire there’s actually a collaborative group the Maya Forest Corridor Fire Working Group that includes the village and includes WCS, The Zoo, Foundation for Wildlife Conservation,  Monkey Bay, the Forest Department and Belize Maya Forest Trust we all are in a group that whenever there’s a fire we alert each other. It’s a Whatsapp group and the trained persons, which does not include myself, respond to whoever is in need. So yes if there is any fire, there’s indication of the fire, who can attend and help put out the fire people volunteer and show up.”

Reporter: How long was this project in the pipeline ? 

Nicole Auil Gomez, WCS Country Director: “This project began two years ago and we have another five or six years to go before closing but really it’s intention is to really have impact on the ground and the intention is to have the communities, in this case the communities develop what would work for their benefit.”

The village council has been trained to properly utilize the equipment.