RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Dis­grun­tled fire of­fi­cers will at­tend a meet­ing to­day with of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to dis­cuss the lack of re­sources and the poor con­di­tions un­der which they op­er­ate.

The pres­i­dent of the T&T Fire Ser­vice and the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer are sched­uled to meet with the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary (PS) at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to dis­cuss the plagu­ing is­sues af­fect­ing the ser­vice and to find ways to bring some re­lief.

This was dis­closed to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day by the pres­i­dent of the T&T Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion Leo Ramkissoon.

This fol­lows on the heels of Sun­day’s hor­rif­ic house fire which claimed the lives of  Kem­ba Mor­ris, 42, and her eight-year-old daugh­ter, Za­ya. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­scribed their deaths as painful and pledged that the Gov­ern­ment would “con­tin­ue to im­prove our abil­i­ty and in­fra­struc­ture to min­imise the fre­quen­cy of such oc­cur­rences” in the fu­ture.

 Ramkissoon list­ed sev­er­al is­sues plagu­ing of­fi­cers in­clud­ing the lack of fire ap­pli­ances and breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sets, which are crit­i­cal for the job.

 “We need to be out­fit­ted with the re­quired ap­pli­ances, that is fire trucks, to be able to re­spond to the pub­lic. We al­so need vary­ing per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment and oth­er equip­ment for fire fight­ing, one very im­por­tant piece of that equip­ment is breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sets. Those are in­di­vid­ual sets that of­fi­cers wear when en­gaged in fire fight­ing and en­able them to en­ter in­to smoke-filled en­vi­ron­ments with a sup­ply of breath­able air.

“Aside from that, we al­so need the fire sta­tions them­selves to be OSH com­pli­ant, health and safe­ty...so that the of­fi­cers can en­joy some mea­sure of a healthy en­vi­ron­ment for work­ing.”

Fire Service Association President Leo Ramkissoon

NICOLE DRAYTON

Ramkissoon said since he be­came an as­so­ci­a­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tive 12 years ago, the Fire Ser­vice had been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing is­sues, but the sit­u­a­tion has wors­ened.

 “It has got­ten worse over the last few years. Even though we would have had short­ages of trucks it would not have been se­vere as it is to­day, where we would have at least eight sta­tions out of 25 with­out a fire truck, and even those with fire trucks are se­vere­ly de­fec­tive and of­fi­cers are at risk just util­is­ing those trucks.

“They (fire of­fi­cers) can al­so de­vel­op res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es and so on,” he added.

Ac­cord­ing to Ramkis­sion, they have writ­ten and met with the PS in the past but very lit­tle has changed. “The last one of those meet­ings will take place to­mor­row (Wednes­day) ac­tu­al­ly,” he said.

“To­mor­row, we are to meet with the PS as well as the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer when we make in­quiries as to the rea­sons why we are not be­ing pro­vid­ed with the re­quired ap­pli­ance, equip­ment, and oth­er things. The usu­al com­plaint part of it is that re­leas­es aren’t be­ing pro­vid­ed. In oth­er words, the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty some­where up there, the mon­ey is not be­ing re­leased to the Fire Ser­vice,” he added.

He said the ex­ist­ing sit­u­a­tion was be­yond the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer’s ca­pac­i­ty to han­dle.

Chief Fire Officer Arnold Bristo

NICOLE DRAYTON

Asked if the meet­ing does not go favourably to­day what would be their next step, Ramkissoon replied, “Wher­ev­er we can take le­gal ac­tion we would. But what is the is­sue? The is­sue is health and safe­ty.

“We have done what is pro­vid­ed for in law such that we have ap­proached the OSH agency and it has act­ed on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions eg, The Point Fortin Sta­tion was shut down for health and safe­ty rea­sons and it found that some ap­pli­ances in the ser­vice were un­safe and they act­ed and, so, that is the process.”

Ramkissoon said they are ad­vo­cat­ing for bet­ter con­di­tions and equip­ment to be able to op­er­ate ef­fi­cient­ly at the fire sta­tions and pro­vide a re­li­able ser­vice to the pub­lic.

He said the sit­u­a­tion was tak­ing a men­tal toll on of­fi­cers “that we can­not pro­vide at least some lev­el of re­sponse ca­pac­i­ty while at work when the pub­lic calls for you, it is tak­ing a toll on us.”

Ramkissoon said fire of­fi­cers need­ed the pop­u­la­tion to stand with them and de­mand that those who con­trol the pub­lic purse pri­ori­tise the safe­ty of the cit­i­zens of this coun­try.

“They need to do that, and we have to do that as mem­bers of the pop­u­la­tion.”

Ef­forts to reach Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds and Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­to for com­ment on how soon the is­sues will be ad­dressed in the Fire Ser­vice were un­suc­cess­ful up to late yes­ter­day as they did not re­spond to any of Guardian Me­dia’s calls or mes­sages.

List of is­sues plagu­ing the T&T Fire Ser­vice:

1) Fire sta­tions need to be re­fur­bished

2) Up­date on the ac­qui­si­tion of breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sets and ap­pli­ances

3) The pri­or­i­ty train­ing plan for the TTFS

4) Ap­point­ment of med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers and health of­fi­cers to pro­vide sur­veil­lance at fire head­quar­ters

5) Time­ly pay­ment of trav­el and up­keep to of­fi­cers act­ing in trav­el­ing po­si­tions

6) Ac­qui­si­tion of an ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ing for the TTFS

7) Up­date on the ab­sorp­tion of the aux­il­iary fire of­fice in­to the ser­vice

8) Con­di­tions of fire sta­tions (OSH Act Com­pli­ance): Ch­aguara­mas–light­ing, fenc­ing; Pi­ar­co, San­gre Grande, Savonette, San­ta Cruz, Rox­bor­ough, Ma­yaro, and Pe­nal Fire Sta­tions–leak­ing roofs; Siparia and Rio Claro–land/soil move­ment which would even­tu­al­ly re­sult in struc­tur­al col­lapse; Fire head­quar­ters in South–elec­tri­cal is­sues; San Juan–the build­ing is too hot, roof to be raised or re­con­struct­ed to fa­cil­i­tate in­stal­la­tion of HE­PA fil­ters and air han­dlers; Crown Point–ten­ders went out in 2017 for fire ap­pli­ances at a then cost of $7 mil­lion. The cost has now jumped to $28 mil­lion

9) Pro­vi­sion of a com­pre­hen­sive re­port/au­dit of oth­er sta­tions

10) Sta­tion clean­ers

11) Train­ing and de­vel­op­ment

2022/2023  al­lo­ca­tion

Al­lo­ca­tions for the T&T Fire Ser­vice ac­cord­ing to the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) Bud­get doc­u­ments:

In fis­cal 2022-23, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice (TTFS) was al­lo­cat­ed the sum of $61.0 mil­lion of which $40.8 mil­lion was ex­pend­ed for the up­grade of ex­ist­ing fire sta­tions, con­struc­tion of new sta­tions and for the pro­cure­ment of ve­hi­cles and equip­ment to en­able the TTFS to pro­vide fire and emer­gency re­sponse ser­vices.

The TTFS de­vel­oped a pro­gramme to con­struct/re­con­struct 17 fire sta­tions across Trinidad and To­ba­go. Con­struc­tion of the Point Fortin Fire Sta­tion ad­vanced to 58 per cent com­ple­tion, with an ex­pen­di­ture of $12.0 mil­lion and is sched­uled to be com­plet­ed in fis­cal 2023. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the sum of $6.3 mil­lion was ex­pend­ed to set­tle out­stand­ing pay­ments on con­tracts for both the Pe­nal and Rox­bor­ough Fire Sta­tions.