The ex­ec­u­tive of T&T Fire Ser­vice will need to use a sta­tis­tics-dri­ven ap­proach to de­ter­mine whether there is a need for more than one fire sta­tion in the Bor­ough of Ari­ma.

That’s the as­sess­ment of Fire Ser­vice Sub-Of­fi­cer Jude Rogers, who ac­knowl­edges the heavy crit­i­cism be­ing lev­elled at the TTFS.  The Ser­vice has been heav­i­ly crit­i­cised for its “slow re­sponse” to the fire at the home of Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for D'Abadie/O'Meara, Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian, who died on Mon­day, along with two of her chil­dren.

The Ari­ma Fire Sta­tion is lo­cat­ed on Green Street, which is with­in walk­ing dis­tance of the late MP's res­i­dence lo­cat­ed on Far­fan Street.

Speak­ing on to­day’s edi­tion of CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, Fire Ser­vice Sub-Of­fi­cer Jude Rogers ob­served that ma­jor needs as­sess­ments for Ari­ma will need to be un­der­tak­en.

“I would imag­ine some sort of in­tro­spec­tion will take place with­in the com­ing weeks and months,” he said. “My hope com­ing out of this, is that we would see the right pro­por­tion of fire­fight­ing equip­ment at­tached to the Fire Ser­vice where it is vi­tal­ly need­ed, es­pe­cial­ly as we grow as a na­tion.”

And the T&T Fire Ser­vice is en­cour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to prac­tice fire safe­ty es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the cur­rent fes­tive sea­son, when more elec­tric­i­ty and gad­gets are be­ing used, and fire­works take cen­tre stage in some cel­e­bra­tions.

“There are per­sons for and per­sons who are against fire­works,” Rogers ob­served.  “How­ev­er, we all have a right to that free­dom to utilise them, but we must do so in a safe man­ner.”

The Fire Ser­vice Sub-Of­fi­cer said those us­ing fire­works must do so re­spon­si­bly.

“You must not put your neigh­bour in dan­ger while us­ing fire­works,” he stressed.

He list­ed key pre­cau­tions that must be tak­en when us­ing fire­works.

“You’re not sup­posed to light or fire a fire­work at any­body di­rect­ly.  You are not sup­posed to use it in the road­way.  Ac­tu­al­ly, you have to be about 60 feet away from the cen­tre of any road­way,” he point­ed out. 

“You should not fire off fire­works un­der your ceil­ing, un­der your garage, or any­where near trees or shrubs,” he added.

The T&T Fire Ser­vice al­so is ad­vis­ing cit­i­zens to cre­ate and prac­tice an emer­gency es­cape plan with their fam­i­lies to be ac­ti­vat­ed in the event of a house fire.