\n\t\t\t\tDepartment of Fire and Emergency Medical Services personnel prepare yesterday to launch the fireboat at Smiling Cove on Saipan for a humanitarian mission to Rota. (Derek Gersonde)\n\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\nNo one was reported injured in the fire, according to Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services spokesman Derek Gersonde yesterday.<\/p>\n
DFEMS received a call about a fire on Friday at 8am, prompting firefighters to immediately respond.<\/p>\n
Gersonde said the forestry unit was the first to arrive at the scene, followed by three other units.<\/p>\n
Gersonde said firefighters controlled the blaze at 8:28am.<\/p>\n
Arson investigation unit investigation showed that the fire was caused by the burning of coconut husks for mosquito repellant.<\/p>\n
Gersonde said the husks were placed on a combustible material, which exceeded the height and width of the flame.<\/p>\n
He said the fire spread to combustible materials and then to a van that was parked under a wooden tin structure.<\/p>\n
Gersonde said the van was burned as well as part of the house\u2019s garage.<\/p>\n
\u201cUpdates will be released when they are available,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, at the request of the Rota Mayor Efraim Atalig, DFEMS launched its fire boat out of Smiling Cove on Saipan yesterday at 11am for a humanitarian mission to Rota.<\/p>\n
Five DFEMS personnel are on the boat to deliver an air-conditioning compressor for the Rota Health Center, 43 cases of butane gas for the Rota relief effort, which were donated by Coral Ocean Point Saipan.<\/p>\n
Gersonde said the butane gas cases were supposed to be flown by air cargo, but due to being hazardous materials, they had to be transported by sea.<\/p>\n
The boat also transported law enforcement equipment such as breathalyzer test kits and operational supplies for Rota Department of Public Safety.<\/p>\n
The boat is scheduled to return to Saipan on Monday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The burning of coconut husks for mosquito repellant triggered a fire that spread to a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":205418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4233,4234,215,3577],"class_list":["post-205405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-derek-gersonde","tag-dfems","tag-public-safety","tag-rota-health-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}