The Chief Fire Of­fi­cer (CFO) of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice (TTFS) has ad­mit­ted that there may have been a dif­fer­ent end­ing if there had been a ten­der at the San­ta Cruz Fire Sta­tion to re­spond to the blaze that claimed the life of a 98-year-old vi­su­al­ly im­paired man.

Mal­colm Di­az died in the bed­room of his Rose­mary Street, Can­taro Vil­lage home in the fire that be­gan at around 6.45 pm on Fri­day. The en­tire house was de­stroyed.

With no ap­pli­ances avail­able at the San­ta Cruz Fire Sta­tion, TTFS of­fi­cers from the Wright­son Road Fire Sta­tion re­spond­ed to the in­ci­dent.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia in a What­sApp text ex­change yes­ter­day, CFO Arnold Bris­to ac­knowl­edged that this con­tributed to the ex­tent of the sit­u­a­tion.

“Hav­ing an ap­pli­ance at the sta­tion would have made a dif­fer­ence, but there was no guar­an­tee that the out­come would have been dif­fer­ent,” he said.

Bris­to added that two ap­pli­ances from the Four Roads and San Juan Fire Sta­tions de­vel­oped me­chan­i­cal prob­lems late last week which, ac­cord­ing to him, con­tributed to the de­layed re­sponse.

As he not­ed that he re­turned to Trinidad ear­li­er in the day, Bris­to said he was await­ing fur­ther in­for­ma­tion from the Fire Pre­ven­tion De­part­ment to de­ter­mine the cause of the in­fer­no.

He al­so ac­knowl­edged that the San­ta Cruz Fire Sta­tion has been with­out an ap­pli­ance for years but point­ed fin­gers at Pro­cure­ment Leg­is­la­tion for equip­ment be­ing down.

“The pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion has made it dif­fi­cult for the fire ser­vice to re­pair and main­tain the ap­pli­ances and equip­ment,” he ex­plained.

Back in April, 42-year-old Siparia mom Kem­ba Mor­ris and her eight-year-old daugh­ter Za­ya died in a fire; sim­i­lar­ly, there was no ap­pli­ance avail­able at the Siparia Fire Sta­tion.

As he of­fered con­do­lences dur­ing a me­dia in­ter­view fol­low­ing the tragedy back then, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds re­vealed that the State would pro­cure sev­er­al ap­pli­ances with one card­ed to ar­rive by June. He said Bris­to had vis­it­ed The Nether­lands with a team to ex­am­ine the cus­tom-built fire ten­der that would be shipped to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

There are more than 20 fire sta­tions across the coun­try and it re­mains un­clear how many are with­out ten­ders or ap­pli­ances.

Min­is­ter Hinds did not an­swer calls or re­spond to mes­sages late last evening re­gard­ing the mat­ter.