An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Calls for tougher con­trols on fire­works are grow­ing af­ter Sat­ur­day’s dev­as­tat­ing fire in Port-of-Spain, which gut­ted a long-stand­ing elec­tri­cal re­pair busi­ness and de­stroyed two homes.

Cit­i­zens Against Noise Pol­lu­tion TT (CANPTT) vice-pres­i­dent for pub­lic re­la­tions Tama­ra Chatar and an­i­mal ac­tivist El­speth Dun­can are urg­ing au­thor­i­ties to take stronger ac­tion, ar­gu­ing that re­peat­ed warn­ings about the dan­gers of fire­works have not trans­lat­ed in­to mean­ing­ful en­force­ment.

Res­i­dents of Pic­cadil­ly Street told Guardian Me­dia that chil­dren had been set­ting off fire­works in the area for about 15 min­utes be­fore the blaze erupt­ed. The res­i­dents, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said the use of fire­works has be­come a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence in the neigh­bour­hood.

Chatar said the in­ci­dent was fur­ther proof that fire­works can­not safe­ly re­main in the hands of the gen­er­al pub­lic.

“I’m again see­ing that you can­not trust fire­works in the hands of the gen­er­al pub­lic,” Chatar told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

She ref­er­enced the re­cent In­de­pen­dence Day in­ci­dent in which a fire­works com­pa­ny em­ploy­ee was crit­i­cal­ly in­jured, not­ing that even trained pro­fes­sion­als face sig­nif­i­cant risks when han­dling such de­vices.

Her con­cerns ex­tend be­yond the im­me­di­ate dan­ger of in­jury to the broad­er im­pact on com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing el­der­ly peo­ple, chil­dren, in­di­vid­u­als with dis­abil­i­ties and sen­so­ry sen­si­tiv­i­ties, an­i­mals, homes and busi­ness­es.

“When your en­ter­tain­ment can set some­one else’s home on fire and ter­rorise en­tire com­mu­ni­ties, in­jure peo­ple and kill an­i­mals, this is a pub­lic safe­ty is­sue,” Chatar said.

She ques­tioned how many more fires, in­juries and cas­es of prop­er­ty dam­age would be need­ed be­fore au­thor­i­ties move be­yond dis­cus­sions and strength­en re­stric­tions and en­force­ment.

Chatar al­so high­light­ed what she de­scribed as the fail­ure to en­force ex­ist­ing laws, in­clud­ing the ban on scratch bombs.

“All scratch bombs are still be­ing set off, right? And not one per­son has been charged,” she said.

Dun­can be­lieves the so­lu­tion should go be­yond lim­it­ing fire­works to pro­fes­sion­al users.

“I think fire­works are ex­plo­sives and I re­al­ly don’t think that in this day and age, when we have things like drones and oth­er kinds of tech­nol­o­gy, I don’t think that some­thing that dan­ger­ous should be in any­body’s hands,” Dun­can told Guardian Me­dia.

At a min­i­mum, she wants the sale of fire­works to mem­bers of the pub­lic pro­hib­it­ed and tougher penal­ties im­posed on those caught us­ing them il­le­gal­ly.

Dun­can al­so dis­missed ar­gu­ments that tighter re­stric­tions would sim­ply cre­ate a black mar­ket, say­ing stronger en­force­ment and mean­ing­ful penal­ties could dis­cour­age il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Her con­cerns are fur­ther height­ened by the im­pact fire­works have on an­i­mals.

An­i­mal wel­fare groups have re­peat­ed­ly warned that fire­works can leave an­i­mals dis­tressed and trau­ma­tised. Dun­can specif­i­cal­ly cit­ed dis­plays near the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo, ques­tion­ing why such events con­tin­ue de­spite the well-doc­u­ment­ed ef­fects on an­i­mals.

She al­so raised con­cerns about fire­works be­ing used near hos­pi­tals and oth­er sen­si­tive lo­ca­tions, not­ing that leg­is­la­tion al­ready places re­stric­tions on where they can be dis­charged.

Port of Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land has al­so called on par­ents to take greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for chil­dren us­ing fire­works fol­low­ing claims sur­round­ing the fire.

How­ev­er, Chatar ar­gued that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty can­not rest sole­ly with par­ents while dan­ger­ous fire­works re­main read­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble.

“We’re hav­ing a good talk. But the re­sults are not hap­pen­ing,” she said.

Both Chatar and Dun­can linked the fire­works is­sue to a wider con­cern about the en­force­ment of laws.

Dun­can point­ed to amend­ments to an­i­mal cru­el­ty leg­is­la­tion around 2020, ar­gu­ing that de­spite sev­er­al hor­rif­ic cas­es of abuse, the pub­lic has seen lit­tle ev­i­dence of those laws be­ing en­forced.

“We have not seen an ex­am­ple of some­body be­ing charged with those new laws,” she said.

She called on the Gov­ern­ment and law en­force­ment agen­cies to meet with af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties, hear their con­cerns and clear­ly ex­plain what ac­tions can and can­not be tak­en.

“That is all we need,” Dun­can said. “All it means is we need to sit down with the pow­ers that be, and every­body gets to speak and lis­ten to each oth­er.”

Chatar not­ed that con­cerns about fire­works have been raised for near­ly two decades with­out suf­fi­cient ac­tion.

“We must be an­gry,” Chatar said.

“This is ter­ror­is­ing.”