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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Officers get sick over broken septic tank

by

20140822

The San­ta Cruz Fire Sta­tion was shut down yes­ter­day with most of its staff be­ing tak­en to hos­pi­tal af­ter com­plain­ing of feel­ing un­well due to fumes from a bro­ken sep­tic tank.Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the 16 fire of­fi­cers be­gan com­plain­ing of nau­sea, vom­it­ing and di­ar­rhoea short­ly af­ter re­port­ing for du­ty yes­ter­day morn­ing at the sta­tion on Sad­dle Road, San­ta Cruz

All the of­fi­cers, ex­cept the sen­try on du­ty, were tak­en to the St James Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal, treat­ed and sent home.When a news team from the T&T Guardian went to the sta­tion yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the front gate was locked and a steady flow of dark liq­uid, emit­ting a pun­gent, nox­ious smell, was seen bub­bling out of the wood-cov­ered un­der­ground tank.

In an in­ter­view out­side the build­ing, as­sis­tant sec­re­tary of the Fire Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion Leo Ramkissoon said the sew­er sys­tem at the front of the build­ing had been dam­aged for over two months."I don't know if it was the rain in the morn­ing but the smell was so much that all the of­fi­cers be­came ill," Ramkissoon said.Point­ing to a large portable toi­let unit parked in the sta­tion's garage and to a new plas­tic waste con­tain­ment tank sit­ting me­tres away from the bro­ken tank cov­er, Ramkissoon ad­mit­ted se­nior fire of­fi­cials recog­nised the prob­lem and were ad­dress­ing it.

How­ev­er, he said, his or­gan­i­sa­tion ad­vised its mem­bers at the sta­tion to refuse to en­ter the build­ing as the bro­ken sep­tic tank had be­come a threat to their health and safe­ty."We have ad­vised them to re­port for du­ty at their near­est fire sta­tion un­til re­pairs are done," Ramkissoon said.He claimed the sit­u­a­tion had the po­ten­tial of af­fect­ing res­i­dents near­by as the liq­uid was flow­ing un­to the side­walk and in­to an open shal­low drain at the side of the road.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Na­yar Ram­per­sad said the ma­te­r­i­al need­ed to rec­ti­fy the prob­lem was al­ready de­liv­ered to the site and con­struc­tion work would be­gin soon.While he high­light­ed the po­ten­tial con­se­quence of the clo­sure of the sta­tion on res­i­dents of San­ta Cruz and neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties, Ram­per­sad ques­tioned the tim­ing of the in­ci­dent as he said the sew­er prob­lem ex­ist­ed since the sta­tion was built."Every­time there is a lit­tle in­ci­dent they blow it out of pro­por­tion and call the me­dia. We have been at­tend­ing to this in the best pos­si­ble way. At the end of the day we have to fix it," Ram­per­sad said.

As he de­scribed the fire of­fi­cers' re­ac­tion yes­ter­day as "con­fu­sion and pub­lic mis­chief", Ram­per­sad said: "It brings ben­e­fits to no one."


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