Rachael Es­pinet

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion Leo Ramkissoon yes­ter­day warned cit­i­zens to do all they could to clear their prop­er­ties of any de­bris which may fa­cil­i­tate the spread of wild­fires.

He made the com­ment as he said T&T was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing one of its worst dry sea­sons and the ser­vice, on av­er­age, has been deal­ing with as many as 100 wild­fires a day. He said the harsh sea­son had led to an in­crease in wild­fires across the coun­try and on Sat­ur­day alone they re­ceived 173 calls from the North­ern Di­vi­sion.

"There were some fires over the week­end and a cou­ple of hous­es were de­stroyed. Sat­ur­day alone there were 113 bush fire calls in the night and 40 calls dur­ing the day from the North­ern Di­vi­sion," he added.

The North­ern Di­vi­sion ex­tends from San­gre Grande to Ch­aguara­mas with 11 fire sta­tions in the di­vi­sion.

Ramkissoon said Sat­ur­day was on­ly one of many busy days the ser­vice had been hav­ing since the dry sea­son be­gan.

Bel­mont res­i­dent Sal­imon Jag­ger­nauth's Layan Hill home was one of two de­stroyed af­ter a bush fire rav­aged the area on Sat­ur­day. How­ev­er, Jag­ger­nauth blamed the slow re­sponse of the fire­fight­ers for her loss, say­ing they took more than an hour to get to their home be­cause a fire ten­der was re­port­ed­ly sent from Ch­agua­nas.

Yes­ter­day, Ramkissoon said while the Fire Ser­vice aims to pro­tect life and prop­er­ty as a pri­or­i­ty, many of the of­fi­cers were not able to re­spond to every call im­me­di­ate­ly.

"Life and prop­er­ty come first. If there is a struc­tur­al fire it would take pri­or­i­ty un­less there is a bush fire that is threat­en­ing prop­er­ty.

"The most dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions are prop­er­ties that are not cleaned prop­er­ly and have a lot of over­grown shrub­bery in the yard," Ramkissoon said.

He said the bush fires on the hills proved to be par­tic­u­lar­ly prob­lem­at­ic be­cause fire trucks could not reach parts of the hills. He said they were bet­ter able to deal with fires in built-up and set­tle­ment ar­eas as the fire trucks could ac­cess fires more eas­i­ly.

"The of­fi­cers are pressed with a for­mi­da­ble prob­lem. Dai­ly the Fire Ser­vice is in­un­dat­ed with calls. The lack of equip­ment and work­ing trucks al­so add to the de­lay in our re­sponse time," he said.

Ramkissoon ad­vised the pub­lic to be vig­i­lant and re­port any fires as soon as pos­si­ble, adding they should al­so seek to ac­quire fire-fight­ing de­vices like a fire ex­tin­guish­er.

Stiffer fines need­ed

Pa­pa Bois Con­ser­va­tion di­rec­tor Stephen Broad­bridge al­so yes­ter­day called for the con­tin­u­a­tion of the mora­to­ri­um on hunt­ing due to the ex­treme dam­age to the wildlife which has been caused by the fre­quent "bush fires" this dry sea­son.

"They should leave the hunt­ing ban be­cause of the de­struc­tion of the nat­ur­al habi­tats that is go­ing on be­cause of the fires. These fires are caus­ing a se­ri­ous re­duc­tion on the wildlife and rais­ing the mora­to­ri­um will just add to the de­ple­tion," Broad­bridge said.

The cur­rent mora­to­ri­um on hunt­ing is set to ex­pire in Oc­to­ber.

Broad­bridge said if the mora­to­ri­um was raised there would be a con­tin­u­ous re­duc­tion of the na­tion's wildlife un­til it be­comes ful­ly de­plet­ed. He added that the fires were al­so go­ing to have a neg­a­tive re­sult on T&T's tourism and the aquat­ic ecosys­tem.

He said the burn­ing of the for­est would al­so cause flood­ing and land­slides dur­ing the forth­com­ing rainy sea­son since there would be a lot of loose soil that would get washed away. These land­slips, he said, would al­so dam­age the ecosys­tem of many aquat­ic an­i­mals.

Broad­bridge al­so de­mand­ed that harsh­er penal­ties be im­ple­ment­ed for slash-and-burn prac­tices and that farm­ers be pro­hib­it­ed from plant­i­ng their crops on land that had been cleared by fires.

De­scrib­ing the prac­tice of slash-and-burn as ar­son, he said there should be a 20-year jail sen­tence for set­ting a wild­fire.

"When you burn the for­est you are de­stroy­ing mil­lions of dol­lars. That should count for a large sen­tence," Broad­bridge said.

He called on the au­thor­i­ties to start "tak­ing bush fires se­ri­ous­ly" so that the prac­tice of set­ting fires were di­min­ished.

Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­source Gan­ga Singh al­so called on the pub­lic to stop in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly set­ting fires. He said all fires should be re­port­ed im­me­di­ate­ly to the hot­line 877-FIRE (3473).