The Governor and his staff permanently moved out of the Government Administration Building – the Glass House – Friday because of fire safety concerns with the building.
The move occurred after a Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) health and safety consultant inspected the building, said Simon Tonge, Head of the Governor’s Office.
‘We received the (inspection) report and made the decision to move yesterday,’ Mr. Tonge said on Friday afternoon. ‘We went into the offices today and got the papers we needed to work.’
Mr. Tonge said new accommodations are being sought.
‘In the interim, we will work out of the Governor’s House until we can sort out some kind of office accommodations in George Town,’ he said.
The Governor’s staff will be getting more of the contents of the Glass House office this week he said.
The FCO inspector, Frank Johnson, was making a routine scheduled visit to Cayman, Mr. Tonge said.
‘We knew a couple of months in advance that he was coming,’
Chief Fire Officer Kirkland Nixon confirmed that he had spoken with Mr. Johnson.
The fire concern at the Glass House is as old as the building, Mr. Nixon indicated.
The Glass House was built in 1974-75, before Cayman had a building code.
Mr. Nixon said every building should have two distinct exit paths from each floor in case a fire breaks out.
In the Glass House, both stairwells end on the ground floor.
‘If the ground floor is on fire, you can’t get out,’ Mr. Nixon said.
‘The Governor may have done us a favour by highlighting the issue.’
Leader of Government Business Kurt Tibbetts expressed concern for the other occupants of the building.
He said a paper would be presented to Cabinet on Tuesday recommending several other offices move from the Glass House ‘as expeditiously as possible.’
Mr. Tibbetts said those other offices proposed to move from the Glass House include those of the Cabinet, the Cabinet Secretary, the Chief Secretary the Attorney General, as well as the Cabinet room.
The government exploring the possibility of moving those offices to the Ansbacher House, Mr. Tibbetts said.
The Government is also looking into a remedial solution for the fire risk problem at the Glass House.
‘Technical staff will be examining the situation,’ Mr. Tibbetts said, noting that the process could possible begin as early as this week.
Mr. Nixon suggested one way to correct the problem.
‘Our proposal for years has been to build two outside staircases,’ he said. ‘It’s a simple safety issue. The means of egress in case of fire are inadequate.’
The situation highlights the Government office accommodation problem which has existed for several years and was exacerbated by Hurricane Ivan.
A plan to build two government office buildings on the old Racquet Club site next to the Glass House and to extensively renovate the Glass House at the same time was shelved because of financing concerns two years ago.
Mr. Tibbetts said government was planning to move forward with an office accommodation project of some sort ‘as quickly as possible’, but said he could not provide any details at this point.
‘It will be going through a formal tendering process,’ he said.
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