Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer (CFO) for south Trinidad, Mukhar­ji Ram­per­sad, says ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures have been tak­en to ad­dress a rat in­fes­ta­tion at the Ma­yaro Fire Sta­tion.

Ram­per­sad said the Fire Ser­vice was alert­ed to the ro­dent is­sue in June and im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion for as­sis­tance.

“The re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion vis­it­ed the fire sta­tion and in­stalled rat bait sta­tions in var­i­ous ar­eas. I be­lieve this took place around June 18,” he said.

Fol­low­ing the in­stal­la­tion of the baits, the fire sta­tion un­der­went a thor­ough sani­ti­sa­tion process, which last­ed three days from June 29 to Ju­ly 1. Ram­per­sad added that the cor­po­ra­tion lat­er re­turned to in­spect the bait sta­tions.

“The sta­tion was pow­er-washed and cleansed us­ing de­ter­gent and dis­in­fec­tant,” he said.

The is­sue came to pub­lic at­ten­tion af­ter sev­er­al fire of­fi­cers, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, raised con­cerns with Guardian Me­dia ear­li­er this week.

One of­fi­cer de­scribed hav­ing to buy ro­dent poi­son from a near­by agri­cul­tur­al sup­ply store.

“It does kill them, but you on­ly have a short time to find and dis­pose of the dead rats be­fore they start to de­com­pose,” the of­fi­cer said.

“You don’t have to find them—you smell them. You’re search­ing all over, some­times you find them in your clothes. That’s just how it is… plen­ty rats.”

The of­fi­cer al­so claimed that sev­er­al fire per­son­nel had fall­en ill due to the in­fes­ta­tion.

How­ev­er, Ram­per­sad and Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Keone Guy said there were no of­fi­cial re­ports con­firm­ing this.

“There have been no re­ports of of­fi­cers falling ill or ro­dents be­ing found in cloth­ing,” Guy stat­ed. “If we were made aware of such in­ci­dents, I’m cer­tain the sta­tion would have been evac­u­at­ed.”

Ram­per­sad con­firmed that the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty (OS­HA) vis­it­ed the sta­tion on Wednes­day. Since the ear­li­er sani­ti­sa­tion, he said, no new sight­ings have been re­port­ed.