Mon­day’s tour by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der has served to un­der­score the sor­ry state of the Princes Town Fire Sta­tion, which had to be aban­doned last Ju­ly amid com­plaints by of­fi­cers about rat in­fes­ta­tion and the like.

More alarm­ing­ly, how­ev­er, is the fact that there have been sev­en house fires in the area since then, with at least two oc­cur­ring in the past few days with­out a sta­tion close by to an­swer the dis­tress call of the res­i­dents.

To make mat­ters worse, oth­er sta­tions in the south­ern belt that should be called up­on when Princes Town is un­able to re­spond, name­ly Rio Claro and Pe­nal, have al­so been deemed by the pres­i­dent of the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion Keone Guy to be in­ad­e­quate, adding to the dire sit­u­a­tion at hand.

For years the as­so­ci­a­tion has been plead­ing for sup­port while em­pha­sis­ing the im­por­tance of the au­thor­i­ties en­hanc­ing the coun­try's abil­i­ty to re­spond ef­fec­tive­ly and prompt­ly to fires.

In fact, in Ju­ly of last year, Guy ex­pressed his con­cerns can­did­ly, stat­ing that the Fire Ser­vice was on the brink of "ab­solute and to­tal col­lapse", while high­light­ing that nu­mer­ous sta­tions were lack­ing the nec­es­sary trucks, per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment and oth­er re­sources to ef­fec­tive­ly re­spond to emer­gen­cies.

Back then, the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent had al­so shared sta­tis­tics, re­veal­ing that nine out of the 23 sta­tions na­tion­wide did not have fire­fight­ing-ca­pa­ble ten­ders.

This in­clud­ed the same Princes Town Sta­tion, which was vis­it­ed by Min­is­ter Alexan­der and se­nior fire of­fi­cials on Mon­day, a few days af­ter he an­nounced the need to in­cor­po­rate 280 aux­il­iary fire of­fi­cers in­to the sys­tem due to a per­son­nel short­age.

Iron­i­cal­ly, even af­ter ma­jor con­cerns were high­light­ed last year, the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion ef­fec­tive­ly slashed the Fire Ser­vice's fund­ing in the 2025 Bud­get by more than 50 per cent.

The al­lo­ca­tion for pur­chas­ing equip­ment and ve­hi­cles was re­duced from $11.2 mil­lion in 2024 to just $4 mil­lion this year. The bud­get for ve­hi­cle main­te­nance was al­so cut by $500,000, and the al­lo­ca­tion for build­ing re­pairs and main­te­nance chopped by $510,000.

We re­main hope­ful that Min­is­ter Alexan­der's pledge to fix things will re­dound to the ben­e­fit of not on­ly res­i­dents of Princes Town but oth­er com­mu­ni­ties which are grap­pling with the slow fire re­sponse.

Fol­low­ing a re­cent fire, it took 45 min­utes for the Mon Re­pos fire of­fi­cers to re­spond, in­stead of the five min­utes it would have tak­en had the Princes Town sta­tion been func­tion­al.

The re­cent trag­ic deaths of for­mer D'Abadie/O'Meara MP Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and two of her chil­dren al­so read­i­ly come to mind af­ter they per­ished in a fire at their home on De­cem­ber 16.

Ini­tial re­ports had sug­gest­ed that Mor­ris-Ju­lian’s death could have been avert­ed if the re­sponse time from the Ari­ma and Tu­na­puna fire sta­tions had been faster.

De­spite the ap­point­ment of a three-mem­ber com­mit­tee by for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to in­ves­ti­gate the fire ser­vice's re­sponse, the re­port has yet to be made pub­lic.

This hes­i­tan­cy by the au­thor­i­ties to ful­ly dis­close what tran­spired does not of­fer com­fort that every­thing pos­si­ble that could have been done to avert the tragedy was in­deed done.

On the con­trary, it con­jures up thoughts of an of­fi­cial cov­er-up of po­ten­tial­ly em­bar­rass­ing fail­ures in this case.

Con­se­quent­ly, we urge the one-month-old Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion to re­veal the facts of the Mor­ris-Ju­lian case.

At the same time, do not on­ly talk of a fix while high­light­ing fail­ures of the past gov­ern­ment, but im­me­di­ate­ly get down to work to en­sure the over­all fire safe­ty of our na­tion.