Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

A $10 mil­lion pro­pos­al to con­struct a new fire sta­tion in San Juan has been put for­ward by the San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, which is warn­ing that the dis­trict is op­er­at­ing with­out ad­e­quate fire pro­tec­tion fol­low­ing the re­moval of its East­ern Main Road fire sta­tion more than a year ago.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said San Juan has been with­out a fire sta­tion for over a year, leav­ing one of the coun­try’s busiest com­mer­cial cor­ri­dors ex­posed to se­ri­ous risk, with emer­gency re­sponse times now de­pen­dent on sta­tions in San­ta Cruz, Mor­vant and Port-of-Spain.

As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Abrahim Ali, speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Hi­malayan Club in Barataria yes­ter­day, said the sit­u­a­tion is crit­i­cal and re­quires im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion.

“We will un­der­take to build a fire sta­tion,” Ali said. “We are well pre­pared and well poised to raise that $10 mil­lion through some of our busi­ness­es that are reg­is­tered with us.” He said the re­moval of the for­mer sta­tion has cre­at­ed a dan­ger­ous gap in emer­gency cov­er­age for both busi­ness­es and res­i­dents.

“That fire sta­tion has been re­moved well over one year ago and we are with­out any as­sis­tance in the event there is a fire that will in­ter­fere with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty,” Ali said. “But we al­so speak on be­half of the res­i­dents. If there is a fire, who re­sponds to that fire?”

Ali stressed that re­sponse time is a de­ci­sive fac­tor in fire emer­gen­cies, warn­ing that de­lays could prove cat­a­stroph­ic in a con­gest­ed ur­ban en­vi­ron­ment.

“The ac­tu­al time that is re­quired to re­spond to a fire is sev­en min­utes,” he said. “The on­ly back­up we have is from San­ta Cruz or Mor­vant or Port-of-Spain. To re­spond to a fire in the heart of San Juan, it is go­ing to be dif­fi­cult.” He said heavy traf­fic along the East­ern Main Road makes it near­ly im­pos­si­ble for ex­ter­nal fire units to reach in­ci­dents with­in the crit­i­cal re­sponse win­dow.

Ali said San Juan’s rapid com­mer­cial ex­pan­sion has sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased ex­po­sure to fire-re­lat­ed risks, with ma­jor busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty now spread across Aranguez, El So­cor­ro and the wider East­ern Main Road cor­ri­dor. “San Juan is the fastest-grow­ing com­mer­cial area in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

He warned that a ma­jor in­ci­dent could over­whelm the area’s lim­it­ed emer­gency cov­er­age.

The as­so­ci­a­tion has iden­ti­fied land for the pro­posed fa­cil­i­ty at the in­ter­sec­tion of the Uri­ah But­ler High­way and the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route, a site it says of­fers strate­gic ac­cess to sur­round­ing dis­tricts. The lo­ca­tion for­mer­ly housed the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme.

“We have iden­ti­fied lands on the Uri­ah But­ler High­way close to the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route,” Ali said. “That com­pound could be trans­formed in­to a fire sta­tion.”

He said the site would al­low rapid de­ploy­ment across San Juan North, Barataria, Aranguez and El So­cor­ro South.

Ali said dis­cus­sions have al­ready been held with San Juan/Barataria MP and Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein, and the as­so­ci­a­tion is now await­ing State ap­proval to pro­ceed.

Re­spond­ing to the pro­pos­al, San Juan/Barataria MP and Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein said the ini­tia­tive re­mains at a pre­lim­i­nary stage, not­ing that key tech­ni­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive re­quire­ments must be met be­fore it can ad­vance to Cab­i­net.

Ho­sein said the mat­ter was dis­cussed at a joint meet­ing on Jan­u­ary 7, in­volv­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion, the San Juan Dis­trict Fire Of­fi­cer and him­self, where the need for re­lo­ca­tion of the fire sta­tion was ac­knowl­edged along­side sev­er­al op­er­a­tional con­cerns.

He ex­plained that tech­ni­cal stan­dards must guide any re­lo­ca­tion, in­clud­ing com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al emer­gency re­sponse bench­marks.

Ho­sein stressed that while dis­cus­sions have been on­go­ing and lo­ca­tions have been iden­ti­fied, the process re­mains sub­ject to for­mal ap­proval.

“Those dis­cus­sions re­quire the ap­proval of Cab­i­net. The dis­cus­sions are still at a very ear­ly stage,” he said.

The min­is­ter con­firmed that pos­si­ble lo­ca­tions were dis­cussed at the meet­ing, with pre­ferred sites iden­ti­fied based on op­er­a­tional suit­abil­i­ty and re­sponse-time re­quire­ments, which he said are es­sen­tial to meet­ing na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al emer­gency stan­dards