As the in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to the cause of yes­ter­day’s blaze which claimed the lives of D’Abadie/O’Meara Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and two of her chil­dren in Ari­ma, the pub­lic wants fire of­fi­cials to ac­count for their re­sponse, as they be­lieve the tragedy could have been avoid­ed.

Speak­ing with re­porters feet away from where the in­ci­dent oc­curred yes­ter­day, for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Forde lament­ed, “The fire sta­tion is not even a block away.”

Pressed about con­cerns that fire of­fi­cers had failed to re­spond in a time­ly man­ner, he claimed, “I don’t have a clue about the re­sponse ... but what I do know is that they were not here on time. That’s for sure. That is some­thing else to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.”

Forde echoed sim­i­lar con­cerns raised by res­i­dents liv­ing close by who be­lieve the three could have been saved had the fire au­thor­i­ties act­ed faster and quick­er.

As the one re­spon­si­ble for en­cour­ag­ing Mor­ris-Ju­lian to en­ter the po­lit­i­cal are­na, Forde said, “It is very, very dif­fi­cult.”

Re­veal­ing they last spoke at a Christ­mas func­tion host­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter on Sat­ur­day, Forde re­mem­bered how much she con­tributed to de­vel­op­ing Ari­ma.

He fought back tears as he said, “The loss is be­yond un­speak­able.”

Forde said Mor­ris-Ju­lian had a gift in know­ing how to com­mu­ni­cate and mo­ti­vate the younger folks.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit of the T&T Fire Ser­vice (TTFS) sought to clar­i­fy the mis­in­for­ma­tion cir­cu­lat­ing in the pub­lic do­main.

It said, “At the time of the in­ci­dent, the TTFS re­ceived the emer­gency call; how­ev­er, the near­est fire sta­tion in Ari­ma was en­gaged in an in­dus­tri­al fire, and the Tu­na­puna Fire Sta­tion was si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly re­spond­ing to an­oth­er house fire.

“Both crews ar­rived at the Far­fan Street house fire as quick­ly as pos­si­ble and worked dili­gent­ly to ex­tin­guish the fire. Up­on ar­rival, a re­quest was made for ad­di­tion­al wa­ter sup­ply due to a lack of wa­ter in the area.”

The TTFS failed to in­di­cate what time the call about the fire was re­ceived, or where the ad­di­tion­al wa­ter sup­ply came from.

It added, “The TTFS reaf­firms its un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to save and pro­tect life or prop­er­ty from dam­age or de­struc­tion by fire or oth­er haz­ards, whether fire-re­lat­ed or not. Our Fire Pre­ven­tion De­part­ment and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dent. This trag­ic event un­der­scores the im­por­tance of em­pow­er­ing com­mu­ni­ties with the knowl­edge and tools to re­duce fire risks.

“As we con­tin­ue to mourn with the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, the TTFS re­mains com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing our emer­gency re­sponse sys­tems and com­mu­ni­ty fire safe­ty ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes, so that trag­ic in­ci­dents like these, would be re­duced. Our thoughts and prayers are with the griev­ing fam­i­ly dur­ing this pro­found­ly dif­fi­cult time.”