The museum

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: Museum, shipping company losses substantial : By JIMENITA SWAIN : Guardian Staff Reporter : The blazing fire Tuesday afternoon on Bay Street caused havoc and confusion from the Ministry of Tourism building to Navy Lyon Road. : The magnitude of destruction forced an alliance between the Royal Bahamas Police Force and the Royal Bahamas Defence Force and also new police recruits in training who were being utilized to combat the raging inferno. : To quench the thirst in the parched throats of fire-fighters, bell-boys from the near-by British Colonial Hilton Hotel transported water back and forth on trolleys. : One of the buildings extensively damaged was the long standing Vendue House that existed from the period of slavery, where slaves were auctioned. : Grace Turner, a curator at Pompey Museum said that, "From what we could tell outside, the roof is extensively damaged." She added that, "Police officers, firemen and defence force officers brought artifacts out first. : "The David Ferguson art collection, a Lucayan canoe under conservation and several archaeological artifacts found from different sites around the Bahamas," was among salvaged works, she said. Turner estimated that about 90 percent of the collection that was in the museum had been saved. : Additionally on the north side of the museum there was extensive damage and "some of the cases which were downstairs, have come out with burnt debris on them. So it seems, as if the floor between the two-storey unit was already being damaged but we don't know the extent of the damage because we were not allowed in the building," she said. : An assessment of the damage could not be conducted, as an inventory of the collection had not been carried out. : "We expect some damage because some collections have been wet; thank God they have not been burnt. The only damage on the paintings is water damage; for most of them it does not look like irreparable damage so we are grateful," she said. : Turner noted that the police had everything under control on the streets at all times. She affirmed that the fire was fueled by winds blowing in a westerly direction and the fact that water pressure could not be maintained did not help the situation. : In the flurry of excitement scores of Bahamians rushed to the streets in front of McDonalds to get a glimpse of a police officer laying in the street following an accident. The officer was injured, when his motorcycle collided with a black 1988 Ford Ranger truck, registered to a Darren Woods. A by-stander at the scene said that, "The police ran into the truck and he slid about 20-feet from his motorbike. He was going with full speed about 50- 70 mph." : Another eyewitness said that, "The man in the black truck was attempting to turn in McDonald's yard but was unable to avoid hitting the officer." : Despite the look of the wreckage, the officer sustained only a broken leg. : Shernette McIver Mackey, a tour manager and ship agent at United Shipping Company, said, "Everything is lost." She explained that the company was the ship agents for Royal Caribbean Cruises and other cruise ships and barges. She added that the cruise ship Majesty of the Seas, that was docked in the harbour was one of their vessels. "All the files and the records for the ships were damaged," Mackey said. She explained that the company deals with cruise ship passengers and employees. : She estimated the extent of damage to documents to be millions of dollars. Mackey expressed the importance of lost documents. For instance, if a crew member went to the doctor, United Shipping would pay the bill and be reimbursed by the cruise company. Unfortunately all records and duplicate records were lost in the fire. : "After the fire we will have to notify the Port Authority of what is lost," Mackey confirmed. : Many Bahamians on the scene described the damage as "a grand lost that will affect the entire Bahamas."

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