Sascha Wil­son

and Kellyann Lemessy

Ma­yaro res­i­dents are ap­peal­ing to the au­thor­i­ties to equip the Ma­yaro Fire Sta­tio af­ter a fire de­stroyed three build­ings, in­clud­ing a home, with­in four days.

Anal­isa Mykoo, her hus­band and four chil­dren, in­clud­ing a daugh­ter who is due to give birth in four weeks, lost every­thing on March 9 af­ter a gas tank ex­plod­ed, de­stroy­ing their home at Mafek­ing Vil­lage.

Since then, the fam­i­ly has been liv­ing in a small wood struc­ture in Bris­tol Vil­lage. Mykoo is ap­peal­ing for ma­te­ri­als to make the tem­po­rary liv­ing con­di­tions com­fort­able for her fam­i­ly.

She has a 23-year-old son and three daugh­ters - 21-year-old twins and three-year-old girl.

“Thank­ful­ly my fam­i­ly was safe, but we lost every­thing, clothes, doc­u­ments, fur­ni­ture, ap­pli­ances. There was noth­ing that could have been saved ma­te­ri­al­ly in the house,” she said.

“While every­one has been help­ful, we are still with­out a home. The gov­ern­ment agen­cies take their time with their pa­per­work. We are ask­ing for as­sis­tance to make where we are, we are stay­ing in a lit­tle board struc­ture in Bris­tol, as com­fort­able as pos­si­ble.”

Mykoo said they need ma­te­ri­als, ap­pli­ances and fur­ni­ture.

She re­called that it took more than half an hour f0r the fire ten­der to ar­rive and by then the house was en­gulfed in flames..

Not­ing that two oth­er build­ings, the Dis­ney­land Build­ing in Mafek­ing Vil­lage and the Scouts Head­quar­ters in Radix Vil­lage, were de­stroyed by fire on March 12 and 10, Mykoo said she is not cast­ing any blame on the fire of­fi­cers. How­ev­er, she ex­pressed con­cern that the Ma­yaro Fire Sta­tion has no fire trucks they are forced to de­pend on the Rio Claro Fire Sta­tion, which is a long dis­tance from Ma­yaro and its en­vi­rons.

“The Fire Ser­vice, while they will­ing to help, they have no re­sources, so I am plead­ing, elec­tions is right around the cor­ner, I am plead­ing to the peo­ple in au­thor­i­ty please, we have a fire sta­tion with no fire en­gines. Half the time the fire hy­drants have no wa­ter,” she said

Re­call­ing the deaths of Kem­ba Mor­ris and her daugh­ter in Siparia and Mal­colm Di­az in San­ta Cruz in 2023 house fires, Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Keon Guy said fire sta­tions con­tin­ue to be un­der-re­sourced.

He claimed the au­thor­i­ties have “dou­bled down” on their “de­fund the fire ser­vice pol­i­cy” with cuts in fund­ing for ap­pli­ances and equip­ment for fis­cal 2024-2025.

Not­ing that the root cause of the cri­sis in the fire ser­vice is the chron­ic un­der­fund­ing, Guy said the lack of in­vest­ment in ve­hi­cles, equip­ment, and sta­tion in­fra­struc­ture has left of­fi­cers strug­gling to ful­fil their man­date of pro­tect­ing the pub­lic.

He warned that with­out ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion, re­sponse times will con­tin­ue to in­crease, lead­ing to greater loss of life and prop­er­ty.

Guy al­so called for the im­me­di­ate re­con­struc­tion of the Princes Town Fire Sta­tion and ur­gent pro­cure­ment of ten­ders and equip­ment to en­sure that all fire sta­tions are prop­er­ly re­sourced.

“The gov­ern­ment must pri­or­i­tize the safe­ty of cit­i­zens by ad­dress­ing these long­stand­ing de­fi­cien­cies be­fore tragedy strikes again,” he said. Any­one will­ing to as­sist the Mykoo fam­i­ly can con­tact them at 278-3073.