Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Op­er­a­tions at the Williamsville Health Cen­tre were dis­rupt­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing af­ter a pri­vate­ly-owned elec­tric­i­ty pole fell on­to the fa­cil­i­ty’s gate, ig­nit­ing a fire.

No one was in­jured, but the sit­u­a­tion left sev­er­al peo­ple tem­porar­i­ly trapped in­side the com­pound, in­clud­ing moth­ers who had brought their ba­bies for rou­tine vac­ci­na­tions.

The fall­en pole al­so caused a pow­er out­age at the fa­cil­i­ty, dis­rupt­ing op­er­a­tions and forc­ing some ser­vices to be post­poned.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the dis­pen­sary was closed off fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, while vac­ci­na­tions con­tin­ued un­der un­com­fort­able con­di­tions, as the build­ing be­came hot and the fans could not work.

The pole, which is with­in the com­pound, col­lapsed just af­ter 10 am. A se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer at the health cen­tre act­ed swift­ly to ex­tin­guish the fire, which threat­ened a car, but for­tu­nate­ly, there was no dam­age, ac­cord­ing to wit­ness­es.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) re­spond­ed to the scene and dis­con­nect­ed the pow­er sup­ply. How­ev­er, the in­ci­dent has sparked con­cern among mem­bers of the pub­lic, who charged that it was the re­sult of "care­less­ness."

"I feel scared be­cause if a fire re­al­ly break out, it on­ly has one en­trance," said a woman as she left with her ba­by. She said mere sec­onds be­fore the in­ci­dent, she had walked through the front gate of the fa­cil­i­ty with her ba­by in her arms. She ad­vised the au­thor­i­ties to take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions and ex­er­cise greater care in main­tain­ing pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture to pre­vent sim­i­lar in­ci­dents in the fu­ture.

Pen­sion­er Kishore Chadee said he came for med­ica­tion but, be­cause the elec­tric­i­ty was dis­con­nect­ed, he had to re­turn next Tues­day.

"I find it is care­less­ness. Why it is care­less, the pole there and peo­ple al­ways com­ing, ser­vice men, so they should see that the pole need chang­ing. What if some­body get dam­age? It is a pub­lic place. Peo­ple must see that the pole rot­ten out. I find that it is care­less­ness."

An­oth­er wit­ness, Naz­im Mo­hammed, who lives next door, said he was wash­ing his car when he heard a noise and saw the pole hit the wire fence and gate.

"It start to spark up, the fire catch in the ground. The se­cu­ri­ty come and out the fire."

Months ago, he said, a new pole was in­stalled next to the di­lap­i­dat­ed one but it was not con­nect­ed.

Es­ti­mat­ing that the orig­i­nal pole was plant­ed more than 40 years ago, he said, "They know it was de­te­ri­o­rat­ed. But you know the gov­ern­ment ser­vice how it is run. But you see how fast they will come now." He was thank­ful, how­ev­er, that no one was in­jured.

T&TEC, in a state­ment, said the pole is pri­vate­ly owned and main­tained by the cus­tomer.

"The cus­tomer was in the process of up­grad­ing the in­fra­struc­ture and had al­ready in­stalled a new pole," T&TEC said.

Re­spond­ing to the in­ci­dent, the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) con­firmed that clin­i­cal ser­vices at the cen­tre were tem­porar­i­ly dis­rupt­ed af­ter the loss of elec­tri­cal pow­er, which af­fect­ed the fa­cil­i­ty’s abil­i­ty to safe­ly de­liv­er rou­tine health­care ser­vices. The Au­thor­i­ty as­sured that emer­gency as­sess­ments were con­duct­ed and no in­juries to pa­tients or staff were re­port­ed. How­ev­er, as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure, all non-ur­gent clin­i­cal ser­vices were sus­pend­ed un­til pow­er was ful­ly re­stored.

Just af­ter 3 pm yes­ter­day, T&TEC con­firmed elec­tric­i­ty to health cen­tre had been re­stored.