Sascha Wil­son

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has de­scribed Sun­day’s hor­rif­ic house fire which claimed the lives of Kem­ba Mor­ris, 42, and her eight-year-old daugh­ter Za­ya as “painful.”

“My heart goes out to a fam­i­ly that ex­pe­ri­ences such a tragedy,” the Prime Min­is­ter post­ed on his Face­book page yes­ter­day, as more in­for­ma­tion on the tragedy came to light.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so pledged that the Gov­ern­ment will move to re­duce such in­ci­dents in fu­ture.

“We will con­tin­ue to im­prove our abil­i­ty and in­fra­struc­ture to min­imise the fre­quen­cy of such oc­cur­rences. Sad­ly, bur­glar proof­ing is es­sen­tial in our world but it is ad­vis­able that we re­view their con­struc­tion de­signs to en­sure es­cape dur­ing emer­gen­cies. Giv­en the dread­ful re­peat of this tragedy, now may be a good time to re­view all our in­di­vid­ual sit­u­a­tions to al­low for im­prove­ments with­out com­pro­mis­ing the se­cu­ri­ty as­pects of the locked bars.”

How­ev­er, Mor­ris’ sis­ter Alana Phillip does not be­lieve they were un­able to es­cape be­cause of the bur­glar proof­ing in­stalled in the house. She told Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day that she be­lieves her sis­ter and niece were over­come by the smoke.

Mean­while, Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Leo Ramkissoon is call­ing on mem­bers of the pub­lic to raise their voic­es against un­der re­sourced fire sta­tions in the coun­try.

Not­ing that he has been rais­ing this is­sue for the past ten years, he said yes­ter­day that there is no room at this stage for any “am­i­ca­ble dis­cus­sion” on the is­sue and it’s now time for ac­tion.

“At this stage, we are call­ing on mem­bers of the pub­lic to come out in sup­port of the as­so­ci­a­tion in terms of our call, our beck­on, for ap­pli­ances at this time,” Ramkis­sion said dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at the Wood­brook Fire Sta­tion yes­ter­day.

His com­ment came in the wake of pub­lic crit­i­cism over the fire ser­vice’s slow re­sponse to Sun­day’s hor­rif­ic in­ci­dent in which moth­er Kem­ba Mor­ris and her eight- year-old daugh­ter Za­ya died at their Quinam Road, Siparia home due, in part, to the slow re­sponse of the Fire Ser­vice.

Mor­ris’ home is a few min­utes away from the Siparia Fire Sta­tion but the ten­der there was not func­tion­ing and an ap­pli­ance from the Pe­nal Fire Sta­tion had to re­spond.

Yes­ter­day, Ramkissoon said, “I say with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion, the Fire Ser­vice is in an ab­solute state of cri­sis. That is be­cause you have at least nine fire sta­tions to­day out of 25 that are un­able to re­spond to the pub­lic.”

Con­firm­ing that there was no work­ing fire ten­der at the Siparia Fire Sta­tion on Sun­day, he said that is, in fact, the re­al­i­ty at many fire sta­tions.

Ramkissoon added, “Whilst I can’t say that had there been a truck at the fire sta­tion that their lives would have been saved, I can say with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion that if it took near­ly an hour for the re­spond­ing truck com­ing from Pe­nal to re­spond, it must have had dele­te­ri­ous ef­fects on fire­fight­ing op­er­a­tions be­cause it would have se­vere­ly ham­pered the of­fi­cers, in that it would have pre­vent­ed them from get­ting there on time.”

How­ev­er, he said they must pay recog­ni­tion to fire fight­ers work­ing un­der those cir­cum­stances and with­out the req­ui­site equip­ment.

While fire sta­tions have been un­der re­sourced for years, he not­ed that each year fire sta­tions re­spond to 6,000 re­ports, half of which are bush fires.

He said WASA and the Fire Ser­vice al­so need to dis­cuss the is­sue of en­sur­ing that there is an am­ple wa­ter sup­ply for fire hy­drants. He added, how­ev­er, that wa­ter tankers at the each fire sta­tion ought to have am­ple sup­ply of wa­ter.

Ramkissoon said, “When of­fi­cers have trucks that are se­vere­ly leak­ing, that are short in terms of equip­ment and ex­tin­guish­ing medi­um, it makes the fire fight­ing op­er­a­tion much more dif­fi­cult be­cause they have less wa­ter to op­er­ate with and they have less ap­pli­ances and man­pow­er, every­thing is ham­pered.”

He al­so ad­vised peo­ple with bur­glar proof­ing in their homes to en­sure they have a lock­ing mech­a­nism from in­side the house to al­low peo­ple to es­cape in the event of an emer­gency. He said the keys to doors and bur­glar proof­ing should al­so be read­i­ly avail­able.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­to on the is­sue yes­ter­day, he said he was head­ing to a meet­ing to dis­cuss re­sources for the Fire Ser­vice.

How­ev­er, an of­fi­cer from the ser­vice’s Pub­lic Re­la­tions De­part­ment con­tra­dict­ed Ramkissoon’s fig­ures, say­ing on­ly five out the 25 sta­tions in the coun­try were with­out func­tion­al ap­pli­ances. He said the four oth­er sta­tions fell un­der the con­trol of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and have not yet been adopt­ed by the Fire Ser­vice. How­ev­er, he said when a sta­tion does not have a ten­der to re­spond, a cov­er­age plan is in place to en­sure they re­spond to all re­ports.

Dur­ing Sun­day’s fire in Siparia, he said the Pe­nal Sta­tion got the re­port around 5.31 pm.

Mean­while, Av­o­cat/San Fran­cique North coun­cil­lor Doo­danth Mayhroo be­lieves that had there been a func­tion­al ap­pli­ance at the Siparia Fire Sta­tion, the moth­er and daugh­ter’s lives would have been saved.

Com­plain­ing about the slow re­sponse of the fire ten­ders to two re­cent fires in his area, he said, “We all share a con­cern that if there is a fire now, Siparia Fire Sta­tion is not equipped to han­dle the sit­u­a­tion. If Pe­nal have to come, every­thing will burnt to the ground. If San Fer­nan­do have to re­spond, is an­oth­er hour, every­thing will be burnt to ground.”

He called on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds to vis­it the old Siparia Fire Sta­tion and deal with the sit­u­a­tion im­me­di­ate­ly.

Hinds could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.