By Johnnie Rosario
Documents from the Port Authority of Guam under the Calvo administration were housed in the DeWitt facility that was on fire Wednesday, according to governor's director of communications Krystal Paco-San Agustin. She is verifying with the government's General Services Agency information from sources that other government agencies housed their records archives at the facility.
In a message to all of DeWitt Guam's customers of the facility, CEO John Burrows said, "Unfortunately, there was fire, smoke and water damage to all our customers' records."
The seaport's general manager, Rory Respicio, confirmed the agency under then-general manager Joanne Brown, entered into an agreement with DeWitt in 2012 to store documents off site. Included in this off-site archive by Ms. Brown are records that, by law, should have remained in the custody of the Port Authority at Cabras Island.
Among these current records are payroll and tariff documents.
An audit released by the Office of Public Accountability was critical of 11 illegal pay raises Ms. Brown received while managing the seaport under Eddie Calvo's administration.
Mr. Respicio provided Kandit with details of the DeWitt-located archive, as follows:
“The Port Authority of Guam does utilize DeWitt Guam to store some of our older documents. We were notified by DeWitt yesterday that our records have smoke, fire, and water damage. We are awaiting more information from DeWitt on the full extent of the damage. We are hopeful that the documents we entrusted with DeWitt remain intact, and we will reserve comment until we really know the status of the documents in storage. In the meantime, our thoughts are with the brave firefighters battling this blaze and we pray for everyone’s safety.”
"In 2012, the previous administration entered into a contract with DeWitt to store our older records off site. We currently have 1,600 boxes of documents in the building that caught on fire but many of those documents have been digitized and scanned. Some of the documents we have in storage include:
- Procurement documents from 2011 and previous years
- Planning records from 2014 and previous years
- Vessel/Tariff documents from 2018 and previous years
- Payroll records from 2019 and previous years
- Board of Directors documents from 2011 and previous years
- NOTE: there are NO employee files from Human Resources stored at DeWitt. All HR employee jackets are stored at the Port."
