To­ba­go Fire of­fi­cials are call­ing on To­bag­o­ni­ans to “buck up” as there has been a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in ve­hic­u­lar and struc­tur­al fires on the is­land since No­vem­ber last year.

Di­vi­sion­al Fire Of­fi­cer for To­ba­go, David Thomas said res­i­dents must do bet­ter as a num­ber of these fires are caused by faulty equip­ment, care­less­ness or may have been set by in­trud­ers. Thomas said many of these fires could have been avoid­ed.

His warn­ing came af­ter the lat­est in­ci­dent at George Street Glam­or­gan where a fire left sev­en peo­ple home­less. The sev­en in­cludes four adults and three chil­dren.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports the struc­ture and all house­hold ar­ti­cles were de­stroyed in the blaze which be­gan around 2 yes­ter­day morn­ing. The two-storey home was val­ued at $540,000 and house­hold ar­ti­cles de­stroyed were said to be worth $ 80,000.

The house was owned by a pen­sion­er, 86 year old Thel­ma Javis.

The Head Fire Of­fi­cial in To­ba­go ex­plained that be­tween No­vem­ber last year to present fire of­fi­cers have been busy treat­ing with more than just bush fires which usu­al­ly co­in­cide with the dry sea­son.

“Be­tween No­vem­ber to now, there have been more than one dozen fires in To­ba­go and that is un­usu­al. Look for in­stance on one night we had two ma­jor fires, one in the East, one in the West on the same night. There is al­so a marked in­crease in the num­ber of ve­hic­u­lar fires on the is­land’s road­way.”

Thomas said while his of­fi­cers are cur­rent­ly gath­er­ing da­ta be­fore mak­ing an of­fi­cial state­ment, pre­lim­i­nary ev­i­dence sug­gests that a num­ber of home-re­lat­ed house fires are caused by faulty LPG gas cylin­ders.

“What we have seen so far is that there are faults in ei­ther the cylin­der heads or the hose and the con­nec­tions that have maybe de­te­ri­o­rat­ed over time or may not be ac­cord­ing to NP guide­lines.”

He said an­oth­er con­cern was the poor judge­ment by some peo­ple.

“We still have cas­es where per­sons come home late they may be ex­treme­ly tired and even in­tox­i­cat­ed in some cas­es and in­stead of go­ing to bed, they at­tempt to pre­pare a meal even re­heat food. These care­less acts could lead to hun­dreds and thou­sands in loss­es.”

Thomas said can­dles left light­ing and un­at­tend­ed are al­so an­oth­er lead­ing con­trib­u­tor to dev­as­tat­ing fires as seen in a re­cent case in Spring Gar­den where there was one fa­tal­i­ty.

The Di­vi­sion­al Fire Of­fi­cer al­so ex­plained that in sev­er­al of the cas­es in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the fires were in­ten­tion­al­ly set.

He urged peo­ple to be mind­ful of how they se­cure their prop­er­ties and to be their broth­er’s keep­er to pre­vent fur­ther loss on the is­land.