Loyse Vin­cent

To­ba­go's se­nior fire of­fi­cials are chid­ing Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots' (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke for mis­in­form­ing the pub­lic about the amount of oxy­gen avail­able at the scene of the drown­ing of two teenagers at the Ar­gyle Wa­ter­falls on Sun­day.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the PDP’s of­fice in Scar­bor­ough, on Wedmes­day, the PDP leader, who al­so rep­re­sents the Rox­bor­ough/De­laford area, said one of the in­di­vid­u­als showed signs of life when they were re­trieved from the wa­ter.

“There were eyes their rolling and cough­ing, how­ev­er the fire ser­vice which was the first re­spon­ders at the scene ... at­tempt­ed to re­sus­ci­tate the in­di­vid­ual ( but )there was no oxy­gen,” Duke claimed.

How­ev­er, Di­vi­sion­al Fire Of­fi­cer To­ba­go Op­er­a­tions David Joseph-Thomas said Duke was mis­in­formed.

He said in the first in­stance, the re­spon­ders need­ed to "get wa­ter out of the per­son's lungs and stom­ach, not (give )oxy­gen."

He said as one of the first per­sons on the scene, of­fi­cers did every­thing they could to save the lives of the per­sons who died.

“We made ex­ten­sive ef­forts at re­sus­ci­tat­ing the in­di­vid­ual but the pupils of the eyes were al­ready fixed and di­lat­ed which means that the brain had ab­solute­ly no oxy­gen,” Joseph-Thomas said

Con­cern­ing Duke's claim about a lack of oxy­gen at the scene, Thomas re­fut­ed Duke’s claims say­ing: “We have oxy­gen so I don’t know what Mr. Duke is talk­ing about.”

Mean­while, Duke called on the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young to do bet­ter for the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ser­vice providers in To­ba­go.

Duke claimed that se­cu­ri­ty providers are “be­ing asked to do a per­fect job with im­per­fect re­sources.”

The PDP leader al­so claimed that the foam ma­chine at the Crown Point Fire Sta­tion is al­so not work­ing and this caused the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port to be down­grad­ed. While Duke claims the al­le­ga­tions are be­ing kept “hush hush” of­fi­cials at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port re­port there has been no down­grade of the fa­cil­i­ty.