Af­ter a rel­a­tive­ly wet start to the lo­cal dry sea­son, rain­fall has be­come scarce, veg­e­ta­tion is dry­ing rapid­ly and bush­fires are be­ing re­port­ed dai­ly to the T&T Fire Ser­vice (TTFS).

The bush­fire sea­son, which ex­tends from De­cem­ber 1 to June 30, has nu­mer­ous fires which have had a ma­jor im­pact on the coun­try’s telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices.

A bush­fire is clas­si­fied as a type of wild­fire that oc­curs in nat­ur­al veg­e­ta­tion such as forests, grass­lands and shrub­lands, ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Fire Pre­ven­tion As­so­ci­a­tion (NF­PA).

Emon Smart of the Cen­tral Fire Pre­ven­tion De­part­ment (TTFS) said bush­fires ig­nite from both hu­man and nat­ur­al sources. Dis­card­ed cig­a­rettes, un­at­tend­ed camp­fires, the burn­ing of de­bris, and even im­prop­er farm­ing prac­tices (such as ‘slash and burn’) can cause bush­fires, es­pe­cial­ly if left un­at­tend­ed and they be­come un­man­age­able.

There are al­so nat­ur­al caus­es such as light­ning strikes and spon­ta­neous com­bus­tion, but these are less com­mon. Smart al­so in­di­cat­ed that topog­ra­phy, winds and the fu­el load (amount of dry, com­bustible veg­e­ta­tion) are the main fac­tors which de­ter­mine the spread of a bush­fire.

Bush­fires scorch every­thing in their path, in­clud­ing util­i­ty poles with im­por­tant telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion and fi­bre op­tic lines. Most re­cent­ly, on March 11, Flow re­port­ed a ser­vice dis­rup­tion “due to burnt fi­bre lines along the South Trunk Road.”

Flow’s di­rec­tor of Tech­nol­o­gy Op­er­a­tions, Rober­ta Nor­man-Reverand in­di­cat­ed that the lines were re­paired and ser­vice re­stored with­in hours of the in­ci­dent.

TSTT al­so record­ed one bush­fire-re­lat­ed in­ci­dent, which was a fi­bre break near Ravine Sable that tem­porar­i­ly dis­rupt­ed mo­bile ser­vices. Al­so, dur­ing the 2024 dry sea­son, bush­fires ac­count­ed for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10% of fi­bre ca­ble breaks across the TSTT net­work.

Dig­i­cel Group’s head of Pub­lic Re­la­tions Col­in Greaves said the com­pa­ny has not been im­pact­ed by bush­fires this year. In June last year, Greaves said a bush­fire near To­co af­fect­ed ser­vice to To­ba­go, while an­oth­er in Cen­tral Trinidad af­fect­ed ser­vice to sur­round­ing ar­eas.

These dis­rup­tions last­ed sev­er­al hours but both com­pa­nies in­di­cat­ed that re­pairs to the fi­bre lines were cost­ly. They al­so col­lec­tive­ly ad­vised the gen­er­al pub­lic to be mind­ful of their ac­tions, as unau­tho­rised fires are against the law and these dis­rup­tions af­fect en­tire com­mu­ni­ties.

What to do when fac­ing

a threat­en­ing bush­fire?

Once a bush­fire is en­dan­ger­ing your home or prop­er­ty, call 990 to re­port the emer­gency to the TTFS. Smart ad­vised that be­ing in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Fire Ser­vice re­gard­ing an on­go­ing fire can al­low them to pri­ori­tise when re­sources are spread thin.

In the event of a bush­fire threat, close all win­dows and doors to pre­vent smoke and em­bers from en­ter­ing. Pro­ceed to a safe area away from the fire if nec­es­sary, or fol­low work­place evac­u­a­tion pro­to­cols to a muster point. At­tempts to ex­tin­guish the fire should on­ly be done if it is safe to do so, and with the ap­pro­pri­ate equip­ment.

Al­so, when dri­ving through smoke, the TTFS ad­vised to re­duce your speed, switch on your head­lights, stay in your lane and main­tain a safe dis­tance from oth­er ve­hi­cles. Be­fore en­ter­ing the smoke, en­sure that the win­dows are up, and if the air con­di­tion­ing is on, use the re­cy­cled air fea­ture. Af­ter dri­ving past the smoke, put the win­dows down to ven­ti­late the ve­hi­cle. If there are any doubts about nav­i­gat­ing the smoke, safe­ly pull on­to the shoul­der un­til con­di­tions im­prove.