Res­i­dents of Ma­yaro are con­cerned about the im­mi­nent dan­ger posed to their lives and prop­er­ty by the ab­sence of a fire ten­der at Ma­yaro Fire Sta­tion. The res­i­dents claimed there have been at least five house fires in the com­mu­ni­ty in the last few months and as re­cent as a week ago when eight mem­bers of a fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing three chil­dren, es­caped death in an ar­son at­tack.

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray said his in­quiries re­vealed that about two months ago the fire ten­der was sent for re­pairs be­cause of a leak­ing tank. While the Rio Claro Fire Ser­vice is ser­vic­ing the area, he said, the prob­lem was the re­sponse time due to the dis­tance and the state of the roads.

He said res­i­dents had to form a buck­et brigade to ex­tin­guish a house fire in Or­toire Vil­lage last month. “This is not 1923, this is 2023, and we are de­pend­ing on buck­et brigades to out fires in a very com­plex com­mu­ni­ty like Ma­yaro.

Ma­yaro has a high thor­ough­fare of vis­i­tors on week­ends. We do have a lot of beach­es. We do have an in­dus­tri­al com­plex. We do have a com­pli­cat­ed tourism restau­rant sec­tor, and when you do not have a ser­vice as a fire ten­der, that brings great con­cern to me,” said Paray.

Not­ing that there was usu­al­ly an uptick in house fires due to in­dis­crim­i­nate use of elec­tri­cal con­nec­tions for Christ­mas trees and dec­o­ra­tions, he called on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to ur­gent­ly rec­ti­fy this mat­ter.

He said, “I have reached out to Min­is­ter Hinds on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions and he has ad­vised me that his in­for­ma­tion states that the ten­der in Rio Claro can suf­fi­cient­ly ser­vice the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty. I do not be­lieve that is the case, and the proof is in the pud­ding.”

Fire vic­tim Steve Bain re­called that when his home at Or­toire Vil­lage caught on fire last month, the fire truck from Rio Claro took about 45 min­utes to ar­rive. Thank­ful­ly, he said, res­i­dents stepped in and formed a buck­et brigade. How­ev­er, he said, they had to use wa­ter from the near­by riv­er as their tanks were dry since they had not re­ceived a wa­ter sup­ply in a month.

“I could have lost my en­tire house if not for the vis­i­tors and young peo­ple around who formed a buck­et brigade from the Or­toire Riv­er to keep the fire un­der con­trol,” he said. Slam­ming the gov­ern­ment for not “tak­ing care of the peo­ple’s busi­ness,” he said, “Ma­yaro had a fire truck at the fire sta­tion where that fire truck went, we don’t know. So what is the pur­pose of hav­ing a fire sta­tion in Ma­yaro and no fire truck, no fire ten­der, no wa­ter on the lines. So what are we left to do. Are we left to pick­et the fire sta­tion? Are we left to block the roads? Again is this the on­ly thing that the gov­ern­ment un­der­stand.”

Ma­yaro Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ray­mond Co­zi­er al­so called on the min­is­ter and per­ma­nent sec­re­tary to do what is nec­es­sary to have a ten­der in Ma­yaro.

Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Leo Ramkissoon said there were sev­er­al sta­tions with­out a fire ten­der but, in the case of the Ma­yaro and Pe­nal, he claimed the au­thor­i­ties failed to or­der a truck when they were build­ing those sta­tions.

“At the end of the day, the as­so­ci­a­tion is say­ing it is huge­ly un­ac­cept­able that any fire sta­tion should be with­out a fire truck, let alone a sta­tion like Ma­yaro with the whole east­ern sea board to cov­er from Guayagua­yare all the way up to To­co to Grande and en­vi­rons. That is un­ac­cept­able. That com­mu­ni­ty there is un­der enor­mous risk. Rio Claro is sev­er­al miles away, over 20 miles away,” he said,

Ramkissoon not­ed that fires have claimed 15 lives and de­stroyed mil­lions of dol­lars in prop­er­ty for this year, he again called for an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al ap­proach head­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter to ex­pe­dite the pro­cure­ment of fire trucks.

At­tempts to reach Min­is­ter Hinds and Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­to for a re­sponse were un­suc­cess­ful.