Many be­lieve min­is­ters lead priv­i­leged lives and are im­mune from the dai­ly chal­lenges con­fronting the pub­lic. The trag­ic death of Lisa Ju­lian Mor­ris, the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for D’Abadie/Omera, and two of her chil­dren in a fire on De­cem­ber 16 in a fire has changed that think­ing. It in­vit­ed dis­be­lief es­pe­cial­ly as it oc­curred on Far­fan Street with­in walk­ing dis­tance of the Ari­ma Fire Sta­tion.

The out­pour­ing of grief demon­strat­ed that the sud­den, un­ex­pect­ed tragedy dur­ing the fes­tive Christ­mas sea­son res­onat­ed with the pub­lic. If a fire could kill a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and fam­i­ly mem­bers, it could hap­pen to any one of us.

The fol­low­ing day, the Fire Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (FSA) is­sued a press re­lease ti­tled “Tragedy Will Un­for­tu­nate­ly Strike Again.” To jus­ti­fy the dra­mat­ic head­line, it iden­ti­fied “crit­i­cal de­fi­cien­cies,” “in­ad­e­quate re­sources,” and “sys­temic is­sues.” The re­lease named six fire sta­tions with­out fire ap­pli­ances and two fire sta­tions that re­mained closed af­ter many years. It al­so not­ed that oth­er ar­eas, most no­tably Ari­ma, are un­der­served as they re­quire more than one fire ap­pli­ance.

The FSA re­lease not­ed that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments’ bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions have been in­suf­fi­cient to ad­dress equip­ment short­ages. It cal­cu­lat­ed that the amount re­quired to ad­dress the equip­ment short­fall is ap­prox­i­mate­ly $100 mil­lion. It con­tra­dict­ed the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter’s com­ment that there were no out­stand­ing re­quests for equip­ment re­sources. In­stead, the re­lease as­sert­ed that the TTFS was on the brink of col­lapse as many sta­tions lacked suit­able trucks and per­son­al equip­ment.

All the facts are not yet known. Eye­wit­ness re­ports from Far­fan Sreet res­i­dents spoke of in­ad­e­quate wa­ter pres­sure as a nor­mal fea­ture of life in the area. Why would the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion send its wa­ter ten­der to as­sist fire­fight­ers in their ef­forts to ex­tin­guish the fire if this were not an is­sue?

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter, Mar­vin Gon­salves re­ject­ed claims by res­i­dents and the Fire Ser­vices ar­gu­ing that re­cent re­pairs to the Hol­lis Reser­voir had en­sured an ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­ply. He said: “Im­me­di­ate ac­tion had been tak­en via the Subero St Boost­er to in­crease the pres­sure to the area.” This sug­gests that WASA’s re­sponse was quick­er than the Fire Ser­vices.

The pub­lic un­der­stands gov­ern­ment’s fi­nan­cial re­sources must be al­lo­cat­ed in ac­cor­dance with pri­or­i­ties. Pro­tect­ing life is an apex pri­or­i­ty, whether the threat to life is from crime or fire. If the FSA claim that a mere $100 mil­lion will ad­dress the ex­ist­ing equip­ment de­fi­cien­cies, why have the Fire Ser­vices equip­ment re­quire­ments been ig­nored? Why build fire sta­tions with­out equip­ping them as in Ma­yaro?

The con­trast be­tween the re­sources spent to con­struct the new To­ba­go air­port and the equip­ment re­quire­ments of the T&T Fire Ser­vices (TTFS) is alarm­ing. The cur­rent cost over­runs on the To­ba­go air­port are more than enough to erad­i­cate all the equip­ment de­fi­cien­cies in the TTFS for all of T&T. In­deed, the ca­pac­i­ty of the new To­ba­go air­port ter­mi­nal will ex­ceed the num­ber of air trav­ellers, lo­cal and for­eign for many years to come, a so­lu­tion to the wrong prob­lem. To­ba­go needs 5000 more ho­tel beds at an in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard.

The new To­ba­go air­port is a mon­u­ment to as­suage the is­land’s dis­af­fec­tion with the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and to in­flu­ence To­ba­go vot­ers. The po­lit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion seems to have greater sig­nif­i­cance than the lives that could be lost be­cause of a poor­ly func­tion­ing wa­ter util­i­ty, or an ill-equipped Fire Ser­vice.

No probe will solve this con­tra­dic­tion.