Ot­to Car­ring­ton

The San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (SJ­BA) is re­new­ing its call to the Gov­ern­ment to stop spend­ing mon­ey on re­pairs and in­stead re­lo­cate the San Juan Fire Sta­tion to a safer, more ac­ces­si­ble site.

Pres­i­dent Abrahim Ali ex­pressed frus­tra­tion that af­ter more than 20 years of ap­peals, the Fire Sta­tion re­mains stuck in its cur­rent lo­ca­tion in the busiest part of the Croisée, cre­at­ing se­ri­ous chal­lenges for emer­gency re­sponse.

“Don’t waste pub­lic funds on patch­work re­pairs,” Ali said. “The fire sta­tion must be re­lo­cat­ed im­me­di­ate­ly to en­sure quick­er re­sponse times and bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions for fire of­fi­cers.”

He out­lined key con­cerns: the sta­tion’s po­si­tion in heavy traf­fic caus­es dan­ger­ous de­lays when fire trucks re­spond to emer­gen­cies; its prox­im­i­ty to the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route ex­pos­es of­fi­cers to tox­ic ve­hi­cle emis­sions a haz­ard con­firmed by re­ports from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and CAR­RIRI; and the sta­tion it­self is out­dat­ed and ill-equipped de­spite cov­er­ing a vast area in­clud­ing St Joseph, Mt Lam­bert, Champ Fleurs, Aranguez, El So­cor­ro, Barataria, and be­yond.

The SJ­BA has iden­ti­fied a bet­ter lo­ca­tion be­side the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion com­pound along the Uri­ah But­ler High­way.

This site, close to the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route and East­ern Main Road, would al­low fire ser­vices to reach all parts of their ex­ten­sive cov­er­age area more ef­fi­cient­ly.

“We urge the gov­ern­ment to act now,” Ali stat­ed. “Re­lo­cate the sta­tion and pro­vide the peo­ple of San Juan with the emer­gency ser­vices they de­serve — no more de­lays, no more ex­cus­es.”