Jan­nelle Bernard

Se­nior Re­porter

jan­nelle.bernard@cnc3.co.tt

The Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T’s (FSATT) Sec­ond Di­vi­sion is de­fend­ing its of­fi­cers as the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­istry and the Fire Ser­vice con­tin­ue to point fin­gers at each oth­er, over the re­sponse to Mon­day’s fire which claimed the lives of Min­istry in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and D’Abadie-O’Meara MP Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and two of her chil­dren.

Ac­cord­ing to FSATT pres­i­dent Keone Guy, the Fire Ser­vice is not to blame for the slow re­sponse to the fire, which be­gan short­ly af­ter 5.30 am.

Neigh­bours claimed the Fire Ser­vice took al­most an hour to ar­rive on the scene, al­though the sta­tion is less than a block away from their Far­fan Street home, and by then, the trio was al­ready dead and sev­er­al oth­er rel­a­tives in­jured.

Speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view on Free­dom 106.5FM yes­ter­day, Guy said the of­fi­cers, who had al­so re­spond­ed to an­oth­er fire ear­li­er, did the best they could with the lim­it­ed re­sources they had.

“They ar­rived at the scene, I be­lieve with­in 11 min­utes or so, from the time the Tu­na­puna Fire sta­tion was in­formed. They were joined short­ly af­ter by of­fi­cers from the Ari­ma Fire Sta­tion af­ter they com­plet­ed fire­fight­ing op­er­a­tions on Tumpuna Road. I don’t be­lieve the crit­i­cism is war­rant­ed, but I un­der­stand the anger and the pain that the cit­i­zens feel. We would want them to di­rect that anger, that pain, that con­cern, and even that blame on­to the right place.”

Guy said the chal­lenges be­ing faced by the Fire Ser­vice were brought to the at­ten­tion of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions, through the me­dia and by writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“For those rea­sons, it is even more frus­trat­ing to hear that my of­fi­cers are now be­ing blamed when, in fact, we would have high­light­ed the is­sues sev­er­al times, and it is not on­ly that we were not sup­port­ed or changes were not made to as­sist the sit­u­a­tion or im­prove the sit­u­a­tion, but we were told that we are alarmist by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

“We were told that we are con­fu­sion­ists by the min­is­ter. The min­is­ter went in­to the Par­lia­ment and in­di­cat­ed that the Fire Ser­vice is prop­er­ly re­sourced. He in­di­cat­ed sev­er­al times that there are no equip­ment short­ages, that the Point Fortin Fire Sta­tion is ful­ly equipped, and that there are breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sets across the coun­try de­spite the sev­er­al in­juries to of­fi­cers.”

Guy re­vealed that five out of 11 fire sta­tions in the North­ern Di­vi­sion were cur­rent­ly with­out ap­pli­ances, in­clud­ing the Bel­mont, San­ta Cruz and Wood­brook sta­tions. He said in the South­ern Di­vi­sion, the Pe­nal sta­tion lacked an ap­pli­ance, and the Princes Town sta­tion re­mained closed.

He said even sta­tions with op­er­a­tional ve­hi­cles faced lim­i­ta­tions. He said the Four Roads Fire Sta­tion, for ex­am­ple, re­lied on a light wa­ter ten­der, car­ry­ing on­ly 400 gal­lons of wa­ter—in­suf­fi­cient for tack­ling struc­tur­al fires.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed sev­er­al fire sta­tions through­out T&T to ver­i­fy the claims of a lack of equip­ment.

At the Ch­aguara­mas Fire Sta­tion, there was no fire ten­der. This was al­so the case at the Bel­mont Fire Sta­tion, al­though fire of­fi­cers were present. In Wood­brook, the sit­u­a­tion was the same, with no fire ap­pli­ance on the premis­es. An of­fi­cer at the sta­tion told Guardian Me­dia that they have not had an ap­pli­ance at that sta­tion for over ten years, and they worked as sup­port for oth­er sta­tions and al­so for search and res­cue.

He added that Port-of-Spain was on­ly cov­ered by the head­quar­ters at Wright­son Road, and they prayed that the day nev­er came that two ma­jor fires oc­curred in the cap­i­tal city at the same time.

The of­fi­cer said the on­ly re­sponse would be from the Four Roads and San Juan Fire Sta­tions.

At the San­ta Cruz Fire Sta­tion, one ap­pli­ance was seen, and at Mor­vant Fire Sta­tion, no fire truck was seen.

Guy said these con­cerns had been raised for years, among oth­er con­cerns that fire of­fi­cers faced for equip­ment.

“We have had sev­er­al dis­cus­sions with the present chief of­fi­cer re­gard­ing the short­age of fire ap­pli­ances, and he is very much aware of the chal­lenges we cur­rent­ly face. With­in the last bud­get, the Gov­ern­ment al­lo­cat­ed $4,000,000 to­wards the pur­chase of ve­hi­cles. I un­der­stand that this $4,000,000 was utilised as a down pay­ment for four ap­pli­ances, which are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive with­in the next one to two years,” he said.

Guy added, “Even though the $4,000,000 was ef­fec­tive­ly used, it does lit­tle to ad­dress the sig­nif­i­cant gap in ap­pli­ances across the coun­try. We have dis­cussed the sta­tions that lack ap­pli­ances, as well as those with very old ap­pli­ances that fre­quent­ly ex­pe­ri­ence me­chan­i­cal is­sues, in­clud­ing pump fail­ures.”

Guy added, “We need a com­pre­hen­sive plan to mod­ernise the fleet and en­sure every sta­tion has the re­sources to re­spond ef­fec­tive­ly. With­out this, the safe­ty of cit­i­zens and prop­er­ties re­mains at se­ri­ous risk.”

Calls to Hinds went unan­swered.

—With re­port­ing by Ot­to Car­ring­ton