The Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion is hope­ful that new­ly ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der will grant them a meet­ing, as it claims the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of Fire Ser­vice as­sets played a di­rect role in Sun­day’s fire, which de­stroyed a house in Princes Town.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Keone Guy said the ex­ec­u­tive wrote to Alexan­der a few days af­ter he took of­fice. While he has yet to re­spond, Guy re­mains op­ti­mistic.

The fire oc­curred around 4 pm on Sun­day at a two-storey house in Hill­side Gar­dens, Buen In­ten­to, just as the home­own­er, his wife, and their teenage son were prepar­ing to leave. Af­ter smelling smoke, the home­own­er dis­cov­ered a mat­tress on fire in a back bed­room and at­tempt­ed to ex­tin­guish it us­ing wet tow­els, but the flames spread rapid­ly. He suf­fered burns to his hand while try­ing to move the bed be­fore evac­u­at­ing his fam­i­ly.

Neigh­bours rushed to as­sist, us­ing gar­den hoses, but the wa­ter pres­sure was too low to con­tain the blaze. Fire­fight­ers from the Mon Re­pos Fire Sta­tion even­tu­al­ly ar­rived, but by that time, the three-bed­room house was com­plete­ly en­gulfed, with con­crete blocks col­laps­ing from the heat.

The Princes Town Fire Sta­tion, lo­cat­ed just five min­utes away, has been closed since Ju­ly 2024 due to poor con­di­tions and a rat in­fes­ta­tion. Its staff and ap­pli­ances were re­as­signed to Pe­nal, leav­ing the Princes Town com­mu­ni­ty with­out lo­cal fire cov­er­age.

Princes Town MP Dr Aiy­na Ali ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over the de­layed re­sponse, stat­ing that Gov­ern­ment in­tends to re­store fire ser­vices in the area. She com­mend­ed the fire­fight­ers for their ef­forts de­spite the cir­cum­stances and said that an as­sess­ment would be con­duct­ed to de­ter­mine how au­thor­i­ties could as­sist the af­fect­ed fam­i­ly.

Guy de­scribed the fam­i­ly’s loss as un­for­tu­nate but not sur­pris­ing.

“We ex­pect to see more res­i­dents lose their homes and prop­er­ties as a re­sult of the Fire Ser­vice be­ing un­able to pro­vide a fire sta­tion or, in some cas­es, where there is a sta­tion, prop­er fire ap­pli­ances. It has been 10 years since the T&T Fire Ser­vice has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing ne­glect, and to­day we are all wit­ness­ing the con­se­quences of that,” Guy said.

He ex­plained that, apart from the draft es­ti­mates from the last na­tion­al bud­get, which al­lo­cat­ed $1 mil­lion for the con­struc­tion of the fire sta­tion, there has been no fur­ther in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the restora­tion of ser­vices to Princes Town.

“More im­por­tant­ly, we had re­quest­ed of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion that, in the in­ter­im, a tem­po­rary lo­ca­tion be sourced in Princes Town, and un­for­tu­nate­ly, they did not fol­low through with that com­mit­ment.”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed act­ing Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Andy Hutchin­son, who said he was in a meet­ing and would re­turn the call. Ques­tions were al­so sent via What­sApp, but there was no re­sponse. Calls and a mes­sage to Alexan­der al­so went unan­swered.