Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­to has ac­knowl­edged that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice (TTFS) had short­com­ings in the pro­cure­ment of 20 wood­en lad­ders in 2022.

The pro­cure­ment be­came pub­lic in­for­ma­tion af­ter a re­quest through the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA), which re­vealed that the 20 lad­ders were pur­chased for $999,000.
The doc­u­ment al­so de­tailed an ex­pen­di­ture of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $62.6 mil­lion for the re­pair of TTFS ve­hi­cles and $13 mil­lion for tyres.

Bris­to yes­ter­day said the Fire Ser­vice re­ceived the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port on the mat­ter in June.

“The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al con­duct­ed a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the lad­der pur­chase. Fol­low­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, cer­tain pro­ce­dur­al flaws in the process were high­light­ed. The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al did not raise con­cerns about pric­ing; the main is­sue was the fail­ure to fol­low sev­er­al pro­ce­dur­al guide­lines. As a re­sult, rec­om­men­da­tions were made to tight­en these ar­eas mov­ing for­ward,” he said.

He as­sured the is­sues had been ad­dressed and the gaps iden­ti­fied have since been filled. 

“The ex­ec­u­tive took the nec­es­sary steps to pre­pare the Fire Ser­vice for the up­com­ing pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion. As a re­sult, we tight­ened all gaps to en­sure best prac­tices in pro­cure­ment, en­sur­ing that every process we fol­low is trans­par­ent and above board,” he said.

In March 2022, dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at the Fire Ser­vice head­quar­ters, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds com­mis­sioned sev­en util­i­ty ve­hi­cles and the 20 dou­ble-ex­ten­sion lad­ders.

Bris­to jus­ti­fied the pro­cure­ment of the lad­ders, stat­ing, “In Trinidad and To­ba­go, as in most places where elec­tri­cal trans­mis­sion lines are still car­ried above ground, a fire of­fi­cer’s pri­ma­ry lad­der on any ap­pli­ance is a wood­en lad­der. This is done for two main rea­sons: to pro­tect the fire of­fi­cer by re­duc­ing the risk of elec­tro­cu­tion and to min­imise heat trans­fer, which low­ers the risk of ex­po­sure when us­ing lad­ders.”

Bris­to added, “While met­al lad­ders, par­tic­u­lar­ly alu­mini­um ones, are al­so used, they re­quire much more rig­or­ous main­te­nance. Alu­mini­um lad­ders, es­pe­cial­ly in the Fire Ser­vice, need ex­ten­sive non-de­struc­tive test­ing to en­sure they re­main safe af­ter ex­po­sure to heat. This test­ing is cru­cial to pre­vent po­ten­tial frac­tures that could in­jure the of­fi­cers us­ing them.”