There are no fire trucks at the Ch­aguara­mas, Wood­brook, Bel­mont, Mor­vant and San­ta Cruz fire sta­tions.

At an­oth­er three sta­tions last week, there were trucks with se­ri­ous de­fects, com­pro­mis­ing the fire of­fi­cers' abil­i­ty to put out fires. But with­in the last few days, the Sun­day Guardian learnt, the au­thor­i­ties start­ed re­pair­ing these ve­hi­cles.

This and oth­er is­sues fac­ing the T&T Fire Ser­vice are putting the pub­lic at an el­e­vat­ed risk of prop­er­ty dam­age, se­ri­ous per­son­al in­jury or even death from ma­jor fires when there is a slow re­sponse time, sev­er­al fire of­fi­cers, whose iden­ti­ties have been with­held to pro­tect them, said. They said the is­sues fac­ing the Fire Ser­vice are se­ri­ous and pose a safe­ty risk.

They are ad­vis­ing the pub­lic to in­stall smoke de­tec­tors, pur­chase fire ex­tin­guish­ers, do elec­tri­cal checks at home and main­tain the grass around their prop­er­ties to min­imise the chances of a ma­jor fire as the cur­rent state of the ser­vice makes it im­pos­si­ble to guar­an­tee a time­ly and ef­fec­tive re­sponse.

The slow re­sponse times, they claim, are large­ly a re­sult of a lack of avail­able wa­ter/fire trucks, in­suf­fi­cient main­te­nance of crit­i­cal equip­ment like lad­ders, in­ad­e­quate safe­ty gear, and an over­all lack of re­sources avail­able to fire of­fi­cers across the coun­try.

In re­sponse to the claims by fire of­fi­cers, the Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer for the Fire Ser­vice Daron Dasent ad­mit­ted that the ser­vice is not where it would like to be, but claimed it is ful­fill­ing its man­date.

“The ser­vice has op­er­a­tional plans in place that utilise ap­pli­ances both from cov­er­ing sta­tions and from oth­er di­vi­sions to as­sist in hav­ing an ef­fec­tive re­sponse in any area. An ex­tra­or­di­nary bush fire sea­son has placed ad­di­tion­al strain on lim­it­ed equip­ment,” he said in re­sponse to ques­tions from the Sun­day Guardian. He con­firmed that there were sev­er­al fire sta­tions with­out fire/wa­ter trucks.

In fis­cal 2022, ac­cord­ing to bud­get 2023 doc­u­ments, the Fire Ser­vice was al­lo­cat­ed $61 mil­lion. $40.8 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, was spent on the up­grade of ex­ist­ing fire sta­tions, the con­struc­tion of new sta­tions, as well as for the pro­cure­ment of ve­hi­cles and equip­ment.

“I am see­ing plen­ty crap hap­pen­ing be­fore things get sort­ed. We are not look­ing to point fin­gers. We are look­ing to solve the prob­lem. I am study­ing to save peo­ple’s lives. To save peo­ple’s prop­er­ties. I just want to get peo­ple out of dire sit­u­a­tions. That’s all I care about.

“It hurts your heart, boy. It had a day right across the street, across the park (less than 200 me­tres away) the air con­di­tion unit on a house caught fire. Look where the fire sta­tion is and look where that build­ing is, firetrucks from head­quar­ters on Wrighton Road had to re­spond,” said a se­nior fire of­fi­cer at a fire sta­tion in west Trinidad.

A Sun­day Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed that as a re­sult of the ab­sence of wa­ter/fire trucks at many fire sta­tions, the func­tion­al­i­ty of fire hy­drants is not be­ing checked as man­dat­ed.

Many have gone years with­out be­ing checked.

When a hy­drant was opened by an of­fi­cer at a sta­tion we vis­it­ed, not a sin­gle drop of wa­ter emerged from it.

“It leaves you de­spon­dent. Every­body blames the fire­man. I hear Bris­to (Chief Fire Of­fi­cer) and all blam­ing fire­men re­cent­ly. It have prob­lems and no­body is de­cid­ing to fix the prob­lems. Yes, we have lim­it­ed re­sources, but we need what we need.

“Gov­ern­ment is not pro­vid­ing enough re­sources to the Fire Ser­vice. We liv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go–seek for self and try for best. Let’s be re­al be­cause the min­is­ters and them don’t have a prob­lem. My fa­ther al­ways tells me this, a stone in my shoe doesn’t af­fect you un­til it reach­es your shoes. But how many peo­ple will die be­fore that hap­pen?” an­oth­er se­nior fire of­fi­cer lament­ed.

The long-stand­ing is­sues fac­ing fire of­fi­cers have be­come top­i­cal again fol­low­ing the trag­ic deaths of eight-year-old Za­ya Mor­ris and her 41-year-old moth­er, Kem­ba Mor­ris, in a house fire in Quinam Road, Siparia, last Mon­day.

Ac­cord­ing to fire ser­vice sources, the firetruck in­tend­ed for use at the Siparia Fire Sta­tion was be­ing used at the Pe­nal Fire Sta­tion.

So, in­stead of fire of­fi­cers be­ing able to re­spond to the Quinam Road fire from the Siparia Fire Sta­tion, of­fi­cers from the Pe­nal sta­tion, a fur­ther dis­tance away, had to go to the scene, caus­ing a de­lay.

Ac­cord­ing to fire ser­vice sources, as a re­sult of a lack of fire trucks in that area, the trucks are ro­tat­ed based on the num­ber of re­ports typ­i­cal­ly made in a cer­tain area.

Fol­low­ing the fire, Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­to ad­mit­ted in a ra­dio in­ter­view that the ser­vice has is­sues with dam­aged ap­pli­ances, say­ing that fire of­fi­cers were in part to blame.

On Wednes­day, mem­bers of the T&T Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion, the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer and the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty met to dis­cuss the is­sues fac­ing the ser­vice.

How­ev­er, af­ter the meet­ing’s con­clu­sion, Fire As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Leo Ramkissoon said no im­me­di­ate so­lu­tions were pro­vid­ed for their many con­cerns.

Of­fer­ing con­do­lences on Mon­day to the Mor­ris fam­i­ly, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said, in a Face­book post, “We will con­tin­ue to im­prove our abil­i­ty and in­fra­struc­ture to min­imise the fre­quen­cy of such oc­cur­rences. Sad­ly, bur­glar-proof­ing is es­sen­tial in our world but it is ad­vis­able that we re­view the con­struc­tion de­signs to en­sure es­cape dur­ing emer­gen­cies.

“Giv­en the dread­ful re­peat of this tragedy, now may be a good time to re­view all our sit­u­a­tions to al­low for im­prove­ments with­out com­pro­mis­ing the se­cu­ri­ty as­pects of the locked bars.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that bur­glar proof­ing should be ex­am­ined, the fire of­fi­cers the Sun­day Guardian spoke with said there are far more press­ing con­cerns with­in the ser­vice that the Prime Min­is­ter should be ex­press­ing con­cern about.

“We have been with­out a truck at this sta­tion since the ma­jor Green­vale flood­ing in­ci­dent in 2018. When are we go­ing to get a firetruck? When?” an an­gry fire of­fi­cer asked.

“How many op­er­a­tional lad­ders does it have in the ser­vice? It has no lad­ders to reach up in a high-rise build­ing. Then Bris­to will say it is our fault be­cause we not tak­ing care of ap­pli­ances? Don’t do us that. There is no main­te­nance pro­gramme in place to main­tain equip­ment. I’m in the job plen­ty of years now and I’ve nev­er known one.”

An of­fi­cer, at a dif­fer­ent fire sta­tion, said, “Lack of re­sources is the main is­sue. We are with­out a fire truck for sev­er­al months. We are al­so lack­ing safe­ty equip­ment. It is frus­trat­ing but we are dis­ci­plined enough to get as much of the job done as pos­si­ble.”

4 to 5 fire trucks cov­er­ing more than 141 square miles

Over the past week, the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed sev­er­al fire sta­tions, main­ly in west­ern parts of Trinidad and Port-of-Spain, to get a sense of the is­sues caus­ing slow re­sponse times at fire sta­tions.

Of the eight fire sta­tions be­tween the Ch­aguara­mas Fire Sta­tion, lo­cat­ed at Air­ways Road, to the San Juan Fire Sta­tion, lo­cat­ed along the East­ern Main Road, three fire sta­tions had wa­ter/fire trucks and five had no wa­ter/fire trucks. This was con­firmed by Fire Ser­vice PRO Dasent.

For the length and breadth of T&T from the Ch­aguara­mas penin­su­la to San Juan, there are cur­rent­ly be­tween four to five wa­ter/fire trucks avail­able to re­spond to fires.

Fire Ser­vice sources in­sist it's four, but Fire PRO Dasent said it’s five.

Each out­sta­tion, ac­cord­ing to Dasent, is sup­posed to have one firetruck, while the Wright­son Road Head­quar­ters is sup­posed to have four, mean­ing the ge­o­graph­i­cal area in ques­tion is sup­posed to have 11 fire trucks.

The four or five wa­ter/fire trucks, which come from three fire sta­tions, cov­er es­sen­tial­ly the en­tire­ty of the pop­u­la­tions and land­mass­es of the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to 2010 cen­sus da­ta, those two cor­po­ra­tions rep­re­sent a pop­u­la­tion of more than 260,000 peo­ple and a land­mass of more than 365 square kilo­me­tres or 141 square miles.

*The Fire Ser­vice Head­quar­ters, on Wright­son Road, has a wa­ter tanker that holds 10,000 litres; a wa­ter ten­der–a small fire­fight­ing truck that holds 4,000 litres of wa­ter; an emer­gency ten­der that is not de­signed to trans­port wa­ter, on­ly fire of­fi­cers and equip­ment; and it al­so has a haz­ardous ma­te­r­i­al ve­hi­cle.

The pump of the wa­ter ten­der–one of the sta­tion’s two trucks de­signed to pump wa­ter to out fires–is not work­ing prop­er­ly, mean­ing it can on­ly hold around half its de­signed ca­pac­i­ty.

*The Four Roads Fire Sta­tion has one wa­ter ten­der that can hold 4,000 litres of wa­ter. The tank, how­ev­er, is in­ca­pable of hold­ing wa­ter be­cause of a leak and of­fi­cers have to con­stant­ly top up wa­ter–every 30 min­utes or so–to be ready in case of a fire.

Those sta­tions, and their four wa­ter/fire trucks, not on­ly re­spond to fires in their ju­ris­dic­tions but must al­so cov­er the ju­ris­dic­tions of the Ch­aguara­mas, Wood­brook and Bel­mont Fire Sta­tions as those sta­tions are with­out wa­ter/fire trucks.

*The Wood­brook Fire Sta­tion has been with­out a truck since Oc­to­ber 2018 when the on­ly truck was tak­en to sup­port flood re­lief ef­forts dur­ing the Green­vale flood­ing dis­as­ter. It nev­er re­turned. The Fire Head­quar­ters Sta­tion on Wright­son Road cov­ers Wood­brook’s zone which cov­ers an area as far as Ara­pi­ta Av­enue, Wood­brook, lo­ca­tions around the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, parts of Diego Mar­tin and Paramin.

*The Ch­aguara­mas Fire Sta­tion, which cov­ers from Fitza­llen Street, Point Cumana down to the Staubles Bay coast guard base, has been with­out a wa­ter/fire truck for sev­er­al months. The Four Roads Fire Sta­tion cov­ers its ju­ris­dic­tion.

*The Bel­mont Fire Sta­tion, which is sup­posed to cov­er Bel­mont, parts of Port-of-Spain to as far as parts of Mor­vant, has not had a wa­ter/fire truck for more than a year.

*The Wright­son Road Fire Sta­tion, which al­ready cov­ers its zone and the Wood­brook fire sta­tion’s zone, must al­so cov­er the Bel­mont Fire Sta­tion zone with its two wa­ter/fire trucks.

*The San­ta Cruz Fire Sta­tion and Mor­vant Fire Sta­tion al­so have no fire trucks.

*The San Juan Fire Sta­tion has a truck with de­fects.

*When the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the Ch­aguara­mas Fire Sta­tion on Thurs­day, we came across an emp­ty garage with its doors kept up­wards.

Sev­er­al of the glass pan­els of the garage were cracked and shat­tered. Lean­ing up, with­out any pur­pose, on the garage was a fire lad­der de­signed to al­low fire of­fi­cers ac­cess to high-rise build­ings.

The grass around the sta­tion build­ing, lo­cat­ed less than 50 me­tres from the garage, grew wide­ly, clear­ly un­kept for some time.

*The garage of the Wood­brook Fire Sta­tion was emp­ty, with noth­ing but a few loud yard fowl search­ing the oil-stained con­crete floor for feed.

On the out­side of the garage’s wall, to the left, was a dam­aged fire lad­der.

In the yard of the sta­tion were sev­en derelict ve­hi­cles brand­ed with the fire ser­vice lo­go, as well as an aban­doned am­bu­lance.

In­side the sta­tion, the com­put­er hasn’t worked for years. Of­fi­cers re­spond­ing to fires use their own da­ta plans to find burn­ing build­ings us­ing Waze.

*The garage of the Bel­mont Fire Sta­tion, blocked off from the view of mo­torists by a black piece of cloth, was al­so emp­ty.

In­stead of hous­ing a wa­ter/fire truck as in­tend­ed, it has been turned in­to a makeshift park­ing spot for of­fi­cers who have nowhere else safe to park giv­en the sta­tion’s Bel­mont Cir­cu­lar Road lo­ca­tion.

PRO Dasent said the San­ta Cruz Fire Sta­tion al­so hous­es the Land Search and Res­cue, and ‘has at its dis­pos­al a ve­hi­cle to re­spond to res­cue and search­es.’

Asked when the four/five fire sta­tions with­out firetrucks will be get­ting a truck again, Dasent said “Based on pro­cure­ment of ap­pli­ances and parts…with­in four to six weeks for parts, and at present, ten­der­ing will be go­ing out to pur­chase new ap­pli­ances.”

Min­is­ter promis­es new equip­ment in 3 weeks

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds in a news­pa­per re­port last week said equip­ment for the Fire Ser­vice will ar­rive in the coun­try with­in the next three weeks.

“He had said the lead time when you or­der one of these cus­tom fire ten­ders or wa­ter tankers would be some­thing like 15 to 18 months. "I or­dered them. The Cab­i­net ap­proved it and we are ex­pect­ing one of them in about three weeks and oth­ers the process­es are be­ing de­vel­oped, so it’s an on­go­ing thing and we are ex­pect­ing more as the time goes by.”

Hinds said a team of of­fi­cers in­clud­ing the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer had re­cent­ly vis­it­ed the Nether­lands where they got to ob­serve the fi­nal touch­es on the cus­tom-built fire ten­ders for T&T.

He al­so said that the Fire Ser­vice re­cent­ly got two new fire ve­hi­cles to deal with sit­u­a­tions that may arise at both the Pi­ar­co and ANR Robin­son in­ter­na­tion­al air­ports.