The op­er­a­tions of the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal hous­ing COVID-19 pa­tients were not af­fect­ed by a bush fire that gut­ted one hectare of land just south of the fa­cil­i­ty, to­day.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that fire­fight­ers from the Savonet­ta Fire Sta­tion moved quick­ly to ex­tin­guish the mas­sive bush fire, which raged be­tween the In­di­an Trail Fly­over and the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal.

Fire­fight­ers said they got a call around mid­day from the Fire Pre­ven­tion De­part­ment about the blaze. Two ap­pli­ances were dis­patched and bat­tled the blaze un­til 2 pm.

Fire Ser­vice of­fi­cials said the blaze was halt­ed to the south at Bap­tiste Street, In­di­an Trail.

The fire sea­son com­menced in De­cem­ber 2019 and will end on 30 June 2020. Fire of­fi­cials told Guardian Me­dia that T&T is now fac­ing one of the dri­est months of the year since the fire sea­son start­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to Fire Ser­vice of­fi­cials, there have been more than 1,000 bush fires for the year, thus far.

The Fire Ser­vice is re­mind­ing cit­i­zens that it is il­le­gal to set out­door fires with­out a per­mit. Ac­cord­ing to the reg­u­la­tions, per­sons caught set­ting an il­le­gal fire can be fined $20,000 and serve six months in jail.

Per­sons wish­ing to set an out­door fire must have the nec­es­sary per­mit from the Fire Ser­vice au­thor­i­ties to do so. Per­sons want­i­ng to do out­door cook­ing al­so should seek ad­vice from the Fire Ser­vice if they are un­aware of the re­quire­ments. In ad­di­tion, any fires used for out­door cook­ing should be ex­tin­guished im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter use.

The au­thor­i­ties ad­vise that smoke—cou­pled with Sa­hara Dust—can cre­ate prob­lems for per­sons with breath­ing dif­fi­cul­ties, es­pe­cial­ly COVID-19 pa­tients.

---

Sto­ry by SHAS­TRI BOODAN