The Gov­ern­ment has come un­der fire for fail­ing to prop­er­ly equip the Pe­nal Fire Sta­tion af­ter spend­ing $71 mil­lion of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey to con­struct the fa­cil­i­ty.

When the mon­ey was in­vest­ed in the con­struc­tion of the im­pres­sive fa­cil­i­ty in Pe­nal, it was with high ex­pec­ta­tions of it be­ing the front-run­ner in re­spond­ing to fires and pro­vid­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid in the area.

How­ev­er, six years af­ter its in­au­gu­ra­tion, the build­ing stands un­der­utilised, de­void of any func­tion­ing fire ap­pli­ances on its com­pound. When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Pe­nal sta­tion, there was on­ly a dys­func­tion­al wa­ter ten­der with a dam­aged bumper.

Pres­i­dent of the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion Leo Ramkissoon said, “It is an in­dict­ment on the au­thor­i­ties to build such a sta­tion and not equip it with the re­quired re­sources” to safe­guard cit­i­zens in the event of fire.

Ramkissoon ex­pressed strong dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the cur­rent state of the Pe­nal Fire Sta­tion, liken­ing it to the Ma­yaro Fire Sta­tion, where there is a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion.

De­spite hav­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 45 fire of­fi­cers sta­tioned at the head­quar­ters, a source at the sta­tion said they of­ten find them­selves un­able to re­spond to fires when the need aris­es.

Re­spond­ing to the of­fi­cers’ plight, Ramkissoon said, “The man­age­ment of the Fire Ser­vice has failed to out­fit the Pe­nal and Ma­yaro sta­tions with prop­er fire ap­pli­ances. Both fa­cil­i­ties re­main with­out a sin­gle fire ap­pli­ance, high­light­ing the ur­gent need to rec­ti­fy the short­age of such equip­ment as soon as pos­si­ble.”

He added that the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer’s ca­pac­i­ty to pur­chase equip­ment is sub­ject to ap­proval from the Cab­i­net, not­ing that Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds has failed to equip the Fire Ser­vice.

Ramkissoon not­ed that the lone wa­ter ten­der as­signed to the sta­tion was in dire need of re­pairs, ren­der­ing it un­us­able.

Ramkissoon iden­ti­fied the ex­ten­sive ge­o­graph­i­cal cov­er­age that the Pe­nal sta­tion was in­tend­ed to serve, say­ing the lack of equip­ment se­vere­ly hin­dered the fire­fight­ers’ abil­i­ty to ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress emer­gen­cies with­in its ju­ris­dic­tion.

“The Pe­nal sta­tion’s cov­er­age area ex­tends to the bound­aries of Siparia, Princes Town, and even Rio Claro, and while each sta­tion typ­i­cal­ly has its des­ig­nat­ed bound­aries, they of­ten need to re­spond be­yond those bound­aries when oth­er trucks are un­avail­able due to oth­er on­go­ing emer­gen­cies,” he ex­plained.

Ramkissoon said the sta­tion’s in­fra­struc­ture was de­signed to ac­com­mo­date a larg­er staff com­ple­ment, but be­cause of the equip­ment short­age, this is not pos­si­ble.

“The sta­tion was en­vi­sioned as a head­quar­ters with an in­creased staff strength, but with­out the nec­es­sary equip­ment, the aug­ment­ed staffing is re­dun­dant,” he said.

Ramkissoon ex­plained that the sta­tion was in­tend­ed to pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive range of ser­vices to the com­mu­ni­ties it serves.

“We do not on­ly fight fires. We re­spond to emer­gen­cies such as flood­ing and earth­quakes, search and res­cue op­er­a­tions, road traf­fic ac­ci­dents, and hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance. We al­so sup­ply wa­ter to schools and gov­ern­ment build­ings,” he said.

How­ev­er, he said, this has lim­it­ed their abil­i­ty to serve the peo­ple.

With the fire­fight­ers at the Pe­nal sta­tion un­able to re­spond to emer­gen­cies, Ramkissoon said of­fi­cers from neigh­bour­ing sta­tions in Siparia, Princes Town, and Rio Claro are now be­ing dis­patched to han­dle fire-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents in the area.

He urged Hinds to take im­me­di­ate ac­tion to pro­vide the nec­es­sary equip­ment re­quired for ef­fec­tive op­er­a­tion.

In April this year, Hinds said over $30 mil­lion was ap­proved by Cab­i­net to ac­quire a fleet of ve­hi­cles for the Fire Ser­vice. These ve­hi­cles in­clud­ed three wa­ter ten­ders, one emer­gency ten­der, one am­bu­lance and one chem­i­cal in­dus­tri­al ten­der, among oth­er ve­hi­cles. He not­ed that the pro­cure­ment process from or­der to de­liv­ery takes be­tween 15 to 18 months and the ap­pli­ances were sup­posed to have been de­liv­ered in May.

Ef­forts to con­tact Hinds for fur­ther com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful as calls and mes­sages to his cell phone went unan­swered.

Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­to di­rect­ed Guardian Me­dia to speak to the Di­vi­sion­al Fire Of­fi­cer in charge of Pub­lic Re­la­tions Wel­fare and Re­search, Dex­ter Hodge, who said five sta­tions do not have ap­pli­ances. These in­clude Pe­nal, Ma­yaro, Wood­brook, Bel­mont, Mor­vant and San­ta Cruz.

How­ev­er, he said the Fire Ser­vice has con­duct­ed a risk cri­te­ria and sta­tions with the high­est prob­a­bil­i­ty of fires are giv­en aid by of­fi­cers from oth­er fire sta­tions.

Hodge ex­plained that ap­pli­ances and oth­er equip­ment have ar­rived in Trinidad but are await­ing clear­ance at the port. Once the equip­ment is cleared, he said, it will be despatched to those sta­tions with­out ap­pli­ances.

Ramkissoon al­so crit­i­cised Hinds for in­ac­cu­rate state­ments re­gard­ing breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sets, em­pha­sis­ing that not all sta­tions were equipped with them. Ramkissoon called on the min­is­ter to vis­it the sta­tions to gain a clear­er un­der­stand­ing of the equip­ment de­fi­cien­cies, es­pe­cial­ly those re­lat­ed to life-sav­ing ap­pa­ra­tus.

Last April in Par­lia­ment, Hinds had said that the Fire Ser­vice ac­quired parts and equip­ment “to re­pair their breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus and in­stru­ments that are with­in their do­main for use in cir­cum­stances of fire fight­ing”.

He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions raised by Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles fol­low­ing re­ports that a fire of­fi­cer al­leged­ly col­lapsed af­ter his breath­ing equip­ment mal­func­tioned while on du­ty in April 2022.

Fol­low­ing that in­ci­dent, how­ev­er, Ramkissoon said that “there are very lit­tle to no breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sets avail­able to fire of­fi­cers at the 24 fire sta­tions across Trinidad and To­ba­go”, and for the most part, they had no breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus.

 Re­spond­ing to a video on Mon­day from fire of­fi­cer Keon Guy who suf­fered in­juries while on the job be­cause he lacked prop­er Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment (PPE), Ramkissoon said Guy’s state­ment was proof that fire sta­tions were poor­ly equipped.

“Keone Guy’s state­ment vin­di­cates our views be­cause while the min­is­ter is mak­ing the claim that we have breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus in all sta­tions, that is not true. A ba­sic check in the sta­tions re­veals there is not enough breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus in sta­tions across T&T,” he added.

In a post, Guy wrote, “While I sit at home and at­tempt to re­cov­er from par­tial thick­ness burns to my face, in­juries I re­ceived due to the lack of a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of PPE (breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus), the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty us­es the cov­er of Par­lia­ment to false­ly in­di­cate that every fire sta­tion has its full com­ple­ment of breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sets. The on­ly thing worse than be­ing in­jured in the line of du­ty and then forced to line up at the pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions for as­sis­tance, is the min­is­ter’s false state­ments which un­for­tu­nate­ly means that no mean­ing­ful re­lief can be ex­pect­ed.”

Hodge said there are breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sets in every fire sta­tion but not­ed that these sets are still in­ad­e­quate.

He al­so said that 225 ad­di­tion­al breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sets will be pro­cured soon to sup­ple­ment the ex­ist­ing short­fall.