Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The San Juan Fire Sta­tion, which is one of the busiest and most cru­cial in T&T, has been shut down in­def­i­nite­ly af­ter a sec­tion of the ceil­ing col­lapsed and struck a fire of­fi­cer last week.

Al­though the of­fi­cer did not suf­fer se­ri­ous in­juries, the in­ci­dent raised safe­ty con­cerns and gen­er­at­ed a swift re­sponse from the T&T Fire Ser­vice and Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty.

Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Keone Guy said a site vis­it was con­duct­ed yes­ter­day by pro­cure­ment of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties man­age­ment per­son­nel. He said the pur­pose of the site vis­it was to ini­ti­ate the pro­cure­ment process for re­fur­bish­ment works, al­though no de­fin­i­tive time­line has been pro­vid­ed yet.

“The sta­tion has a num­ber of se­ri­ous struc­tur­al is­sues,” Guy said.

“Af­ter the ceil­ing col­lapse that left one of our of­fi­cers in­jured, it was de­clared un­safe for con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions. We an­tic­i­pate it may take sev­er­al months be­fore the sta­tion is op­er­a­tional again.”

In the in­ter­im, all per­son­nel pre­vi­ous­ly based at the San Juan sta­tion have been re­lo­cat­ed to the Mor­vant Fire Sta­tion, which will serve as their tem­po­rary op­er­a­tional base.

“Any time a fire sta­tion goes of­fline, re­sponse times in the area in­crease,” Guy said.

“But San Juan is the busiest sta­tion in the coun­try pos­si­bly even the Caribbean in terms of call vol­ume. The im­pact is sig­nif­i­cant.”

Act­ing Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Andy Hutchin­son al­so con­firmed the clo­sure was nec­es­sary, cit­ing Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (OSH) reg­u­la­tions.

“The sta­tion re­quires some re­pairs and up­grades,” Hutchin­son said.

“It’s been that way for a while, and we’ve tak­en this op­por­tu­ni­ty to get it done. But we can’t do the re­pairs with of­fi­cers still in­side. That would breach OSH stan­dards.”

Re­gard­ing the in­jured of­fi­cer, Hutchin­son said, “He was struck on the back by a dis­lodged part of the AC sys­tem, but there were no vis­i­ble in­juries or bruis­es. Still, it was a clear warn­ing that the fit­tings were un­safe. If one fell, oth­ers could too.”

“To pre­vent an­oth­er in­ci­dent, we are tak­ing every nec­es­sary pre­cau­tion to en­sure the re­pairs are done prop­er­ly,” he added. “We’re look­ing out for the wel­fare of both the of­fi­cers and the pub­lic we serve.”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der, who was not present for the site vis­it, for com­ment but got no re­sponse up to press time.