sascha wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@gua­di­an.co.tt

Five months af­ter the Princes Town Fire Sta­tion was closed due to a ro­dent in­fes­ta­tion, Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gowrie Roop­nar­ine is ap­peal­ing to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to re­open the fa­cil­i­ty or im­ple­ment an al­ter­na­tive arrange­ment.

His ap­peal came on the heels of Mon­day’s hor­rif­ic house fire in Ari­ma that claimed the lives of Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and two of her chil­dren.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Roop­nar­ine lament­ed, “Once more, I am plead­ing with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to re­open the Princes Town Fire Sta­tion. I could have nev­er be­lieved that they were go­ing to close the fire sta­tion for so long. I thought they would have made some arrange­ment for a fire truck to be in and around that sta­tion so that should an emer­gency hap­pen in the re­gion of Princes Town we would not have any­one los­ing their life.” Re­call­ing that a fire of­fi­cer’s house was de­stroyed in a fire in New Grant last week, he said if the sta­tion had been func­tion­al, there might have been a dif­fer­ent re­sult.

Roop­nar­ine said he was un­cer­tain where the of­fi­cers were re­lo­cat­ed or where the fire ten­der was as­signed, but said Princes Town des­per­ate­ly need­ed a fire sta­tion.

Roop­nar­ine not­ed that Princes Town had a pop­u­la­tion of 170,000 res­i­dents, and the sta­tion ser­viced four con­stituen­cies, in­clud­ing Na­pari­ma, Princes Town, Moru­ga/Table­land and Tabaquite.

Con­tact­ed for an up­date, Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Keone Guy said since the re­lo­ca­tion of the of­fi­cers, the Gov­ern­ment had al­lo­cat­ed $1 mil­lion to­wards the con­struc­tion of a new sta­tion in Princes Town. Cog­nisant that the al­lo­ca­tion was in­suf­fi­cient to com­plete a fire sta­tion, Guy said they were not ex­pect­ing any con­struc­tion in the next fis­cal term. There­fore, he said, the As­so­ci­a­tion had sug­gest­ed in the in­ter­im, that a tem­po­rary lo­ca­tion be iden­ti­fied for the fire of­fi­cers so that Princes Town would have the nec­es­sary pro­tec­tion.

“Of­fer­ing pro­tec­tion from ei­ther Pe­nal, Siparia or Rio Claro is re­al­ly un­ac­cept­able as the near­est sta­tion there is about 16 kilo­me­tres away, that would mean that the re­sponse time is out­side of 20 min­utes plus,” he said.

When fire of­fi­cers re­fused to oc­cu­py the build­ing in Ju­ly, Guy had de­scribed the sta­tion as a “house of hor­rors” and com­plained about holes in the ceil­ing, as­bestos, di­lap­i­dat­ed bath­room and toi­let fa­cil­i­ties, and non-func­tion­al lights and air con­di­tion units.

Then Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­to, who is now on pre-re­tire­ment leave, said then that the sta­tion was one of the fa­cil­i­ties iden­ti­fied in 2013 to be re­built, but there were sta­tions in a worse state that were giv­en pri­or­i­ty.

Guardian Me­dia sent What­sApp mes­sages to Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds, Min­is­ter Kei­th Scot­land and Act­ing Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Andy Hutchin­son but re­ceived no re­spons­es last evening.