Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Sev­er­al fire sta­tions across Trinidad and To­ba­go are in need of ur­gent re­pairs, with struc­tur­al de­fi­cien­cies, mould in­fes­ta­tion and oth­er health and safe­ty con­cerns af­fect­ing the Fire Ser­vice’s abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly pro­tect the pub­lic, act­ing Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Ansar Ali has said.

Ali said he con­tin­ues to work with the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty to ad­dress the prob­lems, warn­ing that au­thor­i­ties should not wait for an in­ci­dent to oc­cur be­fore tak­ing ac­tion.

His com­ments come days af­ter the Rio Claro Fire Sta­tion was closed over struc­tur­al is­sues and health and safe­ty con­cerns, fol­low­ing an in­spec­tion by Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (OSH) in­spec­tors who flagged 20 vi­o­la­tions at the fa­cil­i­ty on Sun­day.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the Fire Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (FSA), Keone Guy, iden­ti­fied the Siparia, Mon Re­pos, Pi­ar­co, Crown Point, Ch­agua­nas and Wright­son Road fire sta­tions as oth­er fa­cil­i­ties with “sig­nif­i­cant is­sues”.

Guy said the as­so­ci­a­tion in­tend­ed to push for health and safe­ty in­spec­tions at those sta­tions.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment short­ly af­ter, Ali agreed that sev­er­al fire sta­tions need­ed re­pairs, ac­knowl­edg­ing that some of those iden­ti­fied by Guy were in ur­gent need of at­ten­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause of their lo­ca­tions near ma­jor cities and crit­i­cal fa­cil­i­ties such as air­ports.

“A lot of the fire sta­tions have is­sues, and we are work­ing to ad­dress them. Some of them, of course, I won’t say one (fire sta­tion) more im­por­tant than the oth­er... but they should take a lit­tle more prece­dence over oth­ers, like in the case of Rio Claro.”

Ali al­so con­firmed re­ports that a woman at the Rio Claro Fire Sta­tion was in­jured when her leg went through wood­en floor­boards, de­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as “un­for­tu­nate”.

He ex­plained that the build­ing had orig­i­nal­ly been con­demned, but some re­pairs were car­ried out in the re­cent past. How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that the work would not have been suf­fi­cient to bring the fa­cil­i­ty up to stan­dard.

Ali said he met with the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary yes­ter­day, where the con­di­tion of the sta­tions and the nec­es­sary in­ter­ven­tions were dis­cussed.

Guy, mean­while, called for changes to the ad­min­is­tra­tive and fi­nan­cial arrange­ments gov­ern­ing the Fire Ser­vice, sug­gest­ing that the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer should be giv­en the au­thor­i­ty, sim­i­lar to that of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, to act as the ser­vice’s chief ac­count­ing of­fi­cer and have di­rect over­sight of ex­pen­di­ture.

Un­der the cur­rent arrange­ment, Guy said, the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty was re­spon­si­ble for con­trol­ling re­ceipts and ex­pen­di­ture, lim­it­ing the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer’s abil­i­ty to de­ter­mine how best to up­grade and in­vest in the ser­vice.

“As a re­sult, the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer can­not de­ter­mine the best way to ei­ther up­grade or in­vest in the fire ser­vice.”

Guy al­so stressed the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing an ef­fec­tive Fire Ser­vice, not­ing that prop­er fa­cil­i­ties were crit­i­cal to emer­gency re­sponse.

He said the rec­om­mend­ed best-prac­tice re­sponse time for a fire was be­tween five and sev­en min­utes, but ac­knowl­edged that this re­mained a chal­lenge lo­cal­ly.

“The av­er­age re­sponse time for a lot of com­mu­ni­ties goes in­to 20 to 25 min­utes. At the rate that fire spreads due to the size of our homes, which is 30 to 35 per cent small­er than homes in North Amer­i­ca, that means that a five- to sev­en-minute re­sponse time may not be ad­e­quate for us to make an in­ter­ven­tion and maybe save a life.”

Guy said he and oth­er FSA rep­re­sen­ta­tives were ex­pect­ed to meet with Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials to­day to dis­cuss the sta­tus of the Rio Claro Fire Sta­tion and oth­er out­stand­ing con­cerns.

These in­clude med­ical care for re­tired fire of­fi­cers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those liv­ing with dis­eases linked to their time on du­ty.