Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

The file con­tain­ing the orig­i­nal re­port on the con­tro­ver­sial firetruck has gone miss­ing from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

A source at the min­istry, who asked not to be named, told the T&T Guardian the file had been re­moved on Thurs­day. The T&T Guardian, how­ev­er, had ob­tained a copy of the file be­fore.

The con­tents of the file in­clude a draft note for Cab­i­net on the re­trieval of the wa­ter ten­der that ran off the Blan­chisseuse Road on No­vem­ber 17.

The note tak­en to Cab­i­net on De­cem­ber 3 was not that orig­i­nal draft, but a sec­ond ver­sion cre­at­ed to re­flect changes to the price, the dis­tance the wa­ter ten­der ran off the road and the length of time it took to move it.

On the draft note the ini­tials "HM" are writ­ten next to the changes to be made. A note writ­ten by a min­istry of­fi­cial on a minute sheet says the changes were re­quest­ed by the "Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter."

The min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty at the time was Jack Warn­er.

On the fi­nal ver­sion of the Cab­i­net note, NS (12) 313, the price for mov­ing the ten­der has been re­duced from $10,189,115 to $6,850,000.30.

A ze­ro was in­sert­ed to re­flect the dis­tance the wa­ter ten­der fell to read "150 me­tres" and not "15 me­tres," the fig­ure in the draft note stat­ed.

Pres­i­dent of Sam­my's Mul­ti­lift Ser­vices Ltd Ram­dath Ram­subir, in a phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian two weeks ago, claimed the wa­ter ten­der plunged 300-400 feet over a precipice.

"About 300 to 400 feet down. It was very far down," Ram­subir said.

Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Carl Williams re­port­ed that the wa­ter ten­der had run 15 me­tres off the road. An am­a­teur video post­ed on YouTube es­ti­mat­ed the dis­tance at 60 feet.

Ram­subir al­so claimed it took four days to re­move the wa­ter ten­der. Williams' re­port said the wa­ter ten­der was re­moved on No­vem­ber 19, two days af­ter the ac­ci­dent.

Oth­er in­con­sis­ten­cies have al­so been dis­cov­ered as doc­u­ments con­tra­dict state­ments made by for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Jen­nifer Bou­caud-Blake, and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har.

While Bou­caud-Blake, in an in­ter­view, said the mat­ter did not cross her desk, new in­for­ma­tion un­cov­ered by T&T Guardian showed oth­er­wise.

�2 On June 4, Bou­caud-Blake in a tele­phone in­ter­view from the Unit­ed King­dom, said, "I can­not ap­prove any­thing more than $1 mil­lion.

"I did not ap­prove any­thing con­cern­ing that firetruck. It would have had to be at the lev­el of the Cab­i­net and that was be­tween the for­mer min­is­ter and Cab­i­net. It did not pass across my desk at all."

�2 A No­vem­ber 22 note from for­mer chief fire of­fi­cer Williams in­formed Bou­caud-Blake of the $10,189,115 pay­ment that was out­stand­ing to Sam­my's Mul­ti­lift Ser­vices Ltd. Bou­caud-Blake for­ward­ed it to deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary San­dra Lynch. The note from Bou­caud-Blake, dat­ed No­vem­ber 27, said, "Deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Lynch for pro­cess­ing please."

�2 On No­vem­ber 30, Lynch raised a red flag and wrote to Williams seek­ing more in­for­ma­tion

She said, "I am to re­fer to your mem­o­ran­dum FS 4/4/39 Temp. dat­ed No­vem­ber 22, 2012, on the sub­ject above and wish to en­quire in light of the cost of the ser­vice, whether any oth­er com­pa­nies were con­sult­ed with re­spect to the re­trieval of the equip­ment."

Lynch did not re­ceive a re­sponse. Williams has since gone on pre-re­tire­ment leave.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Lynch said, "I will not be able to speak to you on that mat­ter be­cause we are not per­mit­ted to speak to the press."

Asked to trans­fer the Guardian to Bou­caud-Blake, Lynch said she was not yet out back to work. Tele­phone calls to Bou­caud-Blake's cell­phone al­so went unan­swered.

Warn­er did not re­spond to text mes­sages sent to him on the mat­ter.

Warn­er had al­so claimed the wa­ter ten­der went down 400 feet and said the six fire­fight­ers were trapped in the ten­der.

Ra­mad­har said the in­for­ma­tion giv­en to Cab­i­net was dif­fer­ent from what was in the pub­lic do­main.

The Cab­i­net note does not sup­port that state­ment.

Ra­mad­har too could not be con­tact­ed yes­ter­day.

The $6.8m job

The wa­ter ten­der from the Ari­ma Fire Sta­tion was re­spond­ing to a call about a fa­tal car ac­ci­dent in Blan­chisseuse when it ran off the road. Sam­my's Mul­ti­lift Ser­vices Ltd, a sub­sidiary of Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors, was hired to re­trieve the wa­ter ten­der and sub­mit­ted a quo­ta­tion of $10,189,115.

Cab­i­net even­tu­al­ly signed off on a re­vised $6.8 mil­lion price.

Oth­er wreck­ing ser­vices es­ti­mat­ed the cost of such a job at $25,000-$50,000.