Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Even though six new emer­gency ve­hi­cles have been de­ployed across the South­ern Di­vi­sion, fire of­fi­cials are warn­ing that many sta­tions are still op­er­at­ing with age­ing ap­pli­ances that are in­creas­ing­ly un­re­li­able and pose a se­ri­ous risk to of­fi­cers and the pub­lic.

The warn­ing comes from Fire Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (Sec­ond Di­vi­sion) pres­i­dent Keone Guy, who not­ed that since the Gov­ern­ment hand­ed over six emer­gency ve­hi­cles last month — five of which were fire ten­ders and the oth­er an emer­gency res­cue ten­der — they were dis­patched to sev­er­al sta­tions through­out the South­ern Di­vi­sion that were lack­ing equip­ment, in­clud­ing Ma­yaro, Princes Town, Siparia and Point Fortin. He said a ve­hi­cle was al­so as­signed to the San Fer­nan­do head­quar­ters.

“They have be­gun re­spond­ing to emer­gen­cies and have im­proved our abil­i­ty to pro­vide fire­fight­ing ser­vices to those ar­eas.”

How­ev­er, Guy said the ad­di­tion­al trucks have not ad­dressed the con­cern of the age­ing fire­fight­ing fleet, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16 out of 19 sta­tions across the coun­try still in need of re­plac­ing age­ing ap­pli­ances.

He urged the Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue to in­vest in the fire ser­vice and de­vel­op a plan to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly re­place the age­ing fleet to en­sure that it can main­tain the lev­el of fire pro­tec­tion the na­tion de­serves.

Re­call­ing the De­cem­ber 2024 house fire, which claimed the lives of for­mer min­is­ter Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and her two chil­dren, he said one of the re­spond­ing ve­hi­cles from the Tu­na­puna Fire Sta­tion, de­spite hav­ing to cov­er al­most 20 kilo­me­tres to reach the emer­gency, which was fur­ther de­layed be­cause it had to wait al­most sev­en min­utes af­ter re­ceiv­ing the call to build up enough pneu­mat­ic pres­sure to sup­port the brak­ing sys­tem.

“So, the ve­hi­cles have fail-safes that will not al­low them to move off un­til that PSI thresh­old is reached. So that’s one way in which it im­pacts our re­sponse, and that ex­ists in some of those, al­most as I said 15 to 17 sta­tion grounds across the di­vi­sions.”

While the As­so­ci­a­tion had not re­ceived any im­me­di­ate com­plaints re­gard­ing yes­ter­day’s re­sponse to the ma­jor fire in Cen­tral Trinidad, Guy said every emer­gency is dif­fer­ent, and of­fi­cers of­ten en­counter sev­er­al ob­sta­cles which they have a du­ty to try to over­come.

He said eight months ago the Gov­ern­ment sup­plied 228 breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus to the Fire Ser­vice, but as as­sis­tant sec­re­tary An­cel Lemessy in­di­cat­ed re­cent­ly, dur­ing the sev­en- to ten-year pe­ri­od when of­fi­cers were with­out ad­e­quate breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sets, they were ex­posed to the byprod­ucts of fire, re­sult­ing in se­ri­ous or even fa­tal health com­pli­ca­tions.

With re­gard to the re­turn of a fire sta­tion to Princes Town, he said he was ad­vised by the Chief Of­fi­cer that, over the past cou­ple of weeks, ef­forts have been made to up­grade a build­ing in the heart of Princes Town to tem­porar­i­ly house fire of­fi­cers un­til re­me­di­al works or re­con­struc­tion can be­gin at the ex­ist­ing site. He un­der­scored the im­por­tance of restor­ing fire sta­tions in Princes Town and San Juan, which were shut down in 2024 and 2025 re­spec­tive­ly.