KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

& GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

For­mer chief fire of­fi­cer Roo­sevelt Bruce and his team have al­ready gone in­to ac­tion to un­cov­er the truth be­hind what re­al­ly tran­spired with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice’s (TTFS) re­sponse to last Mon­day’s dead­ly fire that claimed the life of Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and D’Abadie-O’Meara MP Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and two of her chil­dren.

Less than 24 hours af­ter Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds an­nounced the three-mem­ber team, Bruce, along with chair­man of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty (OS­HA) Curt Cadet and state at­tor­ney Ashti Ma­habir, vis­it­ed the burnt-out home of Mor­ris-Ju­lian at Far­fan Street, Ari­ma, on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to eye­wit­ness­es, the in­ves­tiga­tive team vis­it­ed the burnt-out house where Mor­ris-Ju­lian lived with her hus­band, Daniel, four chil­dren and oth­er close rel­a­tives.

The team al­so spoke to peo­ple close to Mor­ris-Ju­lian who turned up at the site.

The for­mer min­is­ter and MP, along with her el­dest daugh­ter Xi­anne, 25, and youngest child Je­si­ah, six, died in the house fire last Mon­day (De­cem­ber 16).

The fire be­gan short­ly af­ter 5.30 am and of­fi­cers at the Ari­ma Fire Sta­tion, lo­cat­ed with­in walk­ing dis­tance of the house, were alert­ed with­in min­utes. Two peo­ple who made re­ports to the Fire Ser­vice told Guardian Me­dia there was no ur­gency from the fire of­fi­cers and neigh­bours al­so claimed the Fire Ser­vice did not ar­rive un­til al­most an hour lat­er. By the time they ar­rived, the vic­tims were al­ready dead ac­cord­ing to wit­ness­es.

The com­mit­tee was giv­en two weeks to com­plete its in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Mean­while, for­mer UNC min­is­ter Jack Warn­er is call­ing for an in­de­pen­dent chair to be ap­point­ed to head the prob­ing team.

In a let­ter yes­ter­day, Warn­er said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of this mag­ni­tude re­quired a chair­per­son who is both in­de­pen­dent and deeply knowl­edge­able about oc­cu­pa­tion­al safe­ty, risk man­age­ment, and sys­temic ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“This is why the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty should have ap­point­ed an ex­pe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­al from the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Ad­min­is­tra­tion (OS­HA) or a sim­i­lar­ly neu­tral body to lead the com­mit­tee,” he said.

Warn­er said the de­ci­sion to ap­point Bruce to chair the team may ini­tial­ly seem log­i­cal, but giv­en his ex­pe­ri­ence with­in the TTFS, it rais­es sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns about the in­tegri­ty and in­de­pen­dence of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“Both pri­or to Mr Bruce’s tenure at the helm of the TTFS and even af­ter he left, there were in­sti­tu­tion­al fail­ures in the TTFS, fail­ures that con­tin­ue to per­sist even to­day. These sys­temic is­sues, which may have con­tributed to the de­layed and in­ad­e­quate re­sponse on this par­tic­u­lar oc­ca­sion when the Mor­ris-Ju­lian tragedy oc­curred, war­rant an im­par­tial ex­am­i­na­tion by some­one out­side the TTFS,” Warn­er said.

He said the rea­sons for such in­de­pen­dence would al­so be avoid­ing “con­flicts of in­ter­est,” as he claimed Bruce’s “ex­ten­sive ties to the TTFS could in­ad­ver­tent­ly bias the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“A com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­quires the abil­i­ty to scru­ti­nise the TTFS with­out reser­va­tion or un­due in­flu­ence...Un­der Mr Bruce’s tenure, sys­temic is­sues such as out­dat­ed equip­ment, in­suf­fi­cient train­ing, and poor re­source al­lo­ca­tion al­so were promi­nent com­plaints. Many of these de­fi­cien­cies re­main un­re­solved to­day. Al­low­ing some­one who presided over such con­di­tions to lead this in­ves­ti­ga­tion risks over­look­ing crit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion­al short­com­ings that must be ad­dressed to re­store pub­lic con­fi­dence,” Warn­er added.

Fur­ther, he said act­ing Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Andy Hutchin­son should not be held ac­count­able for the dev­as­tat­ing out­come of the fire, as he in­her­it­ed a sys­tem plagued by chal­lenges that have per­sist­ed for decades.

“This re­cent tragedy should serve as a wake-up call, not just for the TTFS but for the en­tire emer­gency re­sponse sys­tem. To ho­n­our the mem­o­ry of Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and her chil­dren, we must de­mand a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion led by some­one with the in­de­pen­dence and ex­per­tise to de­liv­er mean­ing­ful rec­om­men­da­tions. Any­thing less is an in­jus­tice to their mem­o­ry and to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Warn­er said, re­it­er­at­ing that ap­point­ing an in­de­pen­dent OS­HA pro­fes­sion­al to chair the com­mit­tee would be a pow­er­ful step in the right di­rec­tion.