Ot­to Car­ring­ton

New ve­hi­cles and equip­ment have been hand­ed over to the Fire Ser­vice.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds told fire of­fi­cials dur­ing the hand­ing over cer­e­mo­ny at Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters yes­ter­day that they should ex­pect more state-of-the-art equip­ment.

The min­is­ter not­ed that a com­pre­hen­sive main­te­nance plan will be put in place to en­sure that there is val­ue for mon­ey.

He said the prob­lem with breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus will be no more.

Hinds said, "The ser­vice has be­gun the re­pair and main­te­nance of equip­ment that has been ac­quired. I've heard a few bits of pub­lic com­ment, I raised the mat­ter when I first did with your Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Mr Bris­tow he re­spond­ed prompt­ly. He told me that equip­ment which had been or­dered was in tran­sit. Of course, as we all know, COVID-19 has af­fect­ed in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness and in­ter­na­tion­al trade, the parts and equip­ment will come in. Hap­pi­ly, when they are here, the work to re­pair equip­ment has be­gun. It means there­fore that on a dai­ly ba­sis more and more bits of this type of breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus will come in­to your de­ploy­ment. And there­fore we hope that the prob­lems as high­light­ed would qui­et­ly re­cede. And we get on with the busi­ness of fire­fight­ing in the way we know."

The Fire Ser­vice re­ceived vans and lad­ders which were pro­cured by Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Lim­it­ed and Massy Lim­it­ed.

The min­is­ter not­ed that "Cab­i­net has ap­proved the pur­chase of cus­tom-built wa­ter ten­ders to aug­ment the ca­pac­i­ty of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the Wood­brook Fire Sta­tion. And it is en­vis­aged that that will serve large chunks of the city of Port- of- Spain and en­vi­rons. When nec­es­sary, the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of this wa­ter ten­der will in­clude the dis­pen­sa­tion of foam, and it will be set with spe­cialised res­cue equip­ment that was ap­proved re­cent­ly in the Cab­i­net".

He added: "It is no one or­der, as you know, these spe­cialised equip­ment are cus­tom-built, and they take some time. But we look for­ward to the ar­rival, we look for­ward to their ap­pli­ca­tion in the ser­vice of the fire or­gan­i­sa­tion and the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

On the is­sue of fire sta­tions, the min­is­ter not­ed that works have com­menced to re­fur­bish them.

He said, "Sig­nif­i­cant re­fur­bish­ment work has been un­der­tak­en and is on­go­ing at Tu­na­puna and Scar­bor­ough Fire Sta­tions as well as right here–Fire Ser­vice head­quar­ters. Where we are sit­u­at­ed to­day, this in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment is be­ing pur­sued to en­sure that mem­bers of the Fire Ser­vice are pro­vid­ed with a work­ing en­vi­ron­ment in which they can do their job ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly."

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