Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­tow has de­fend­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of 20 wood­en lad­ders by the T&T Fire Ser­vice (TTFS) for just un­der $1 mil­lion. He al­so de­nied claims that the lad­ders are not in use.

“The stan­dard in Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice lad­ders has al­ways been in­te­gral and wood­en lad­ders have al­ways been a key el­e­ment in our or­ga­ni­za­tion’s ap­pa­ra­tus,” he ex­plained.

“The stan­dard fire truck ap­pli­ance would nor­mal­ly be re­quired to car­ry three lad­ders, a first floor lad­der, a 13.5 me­ter ex­ten­sion lad­der, as well as a 10.5 me­ter ex­ten­sion lad­der. It has al­ways been the choice of the Fire Ser­vice to have wood lad­ders be­cause wood does not con­duct elec­tric­i­ty.”

Bris­tow said be­cause elec­tri­cal trans­mis­sion lines across the coun­try are still lo­cat­ed above ground, fire of­fi­cers are able to make a tac­ti­cal de­ci­sion in terms of which lad­der to use in a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion.

The pro­cure­ment of lad­ders be­came a con­tentious is­sue when so­cial ac­tivist and busi­ness­man In­shan Ish­mael made a re­quest through the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act for da­ta on fire­fight­ing equip­ment pur­chased for fire sta­tions and fire­fight­er per­son­nel be­tween Jan­u­ary 2015 to April 2023.

It was re­vealed, among oth­er things, that the 20 wood­en lad­ders had been pur­chased for $999,000.

Bris­tow said since he joined the TTFS ex­ec­u­tive in 2015 un­der then Fire Chief Roosvelt Bruce there has been a tight­en­ing of pro­cure­ment prac­tices “to en­sure that best prac­tices are ap­plied to all our pro­cure­ment pur­chas­es.”

Dur­ing the re­cent sit­ting of Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee when the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry’s fi­nan­cial records were be­ing ex­am­ined, Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles asked about the pro­cure­ment of the lad­ders and ques­tioned the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process.

How­ev­er, Bris­tow said the lad­ders are be­ing used and the on­ly set­back is the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of trucks to ac­co­mo­date them.

He said when he be­came Fire Chief one no­table is­sue he en­coun­tered was the Fire Ser­vice’s em­pha­sis on front-end pro­cure­ment rather than back-end pro­cure­ment to en­sure time­ly pay­ments for goods and ser­vices.

He said the pri­ma­ry sup­pli­er for weld­ing equip­ment and gas used for fire ap­pli­ances is Massy Gas, for­mer­ly known as IGL but the TTFS ac­counts have been frozen since around 2012 or 2013 due to out­stand­ing bills.

Bris­tow said this has hin­dered ac­cess to nec­es­sary re­sources, par­tic­u­lar­ly for retro­fitting num­rous ap­pli­ances to ac­com­mo­date new lad­ders.

He said he ini­ti­at­ed a pi­lot project in the North­ern Di­vi­sion, retro­fitting two ap­pli­ances lo­cat­ed in Ch­aguara­mas and at Fire Ser­vices Head­quar­ters in Port of Spain and these sta­tions re­ceived the new wood­en lad­ders as part of this ini­tia­tive.