The deaths last week­end of Kem­ba Mor­ris and her daugh­ter Za­ya in a fire at their Siparia home has again brought heat­ed de­bate over the re­source is­sue plagu­ing the T&T Fire Ser­vice (TTFS).

It is al­ways un­for­tu­nate when it takes a tragedy to spark the con­ver­sa­tions that move a Gov­ern­ment to crit­i­cal ac­tion, but this is one oc­ca­sion where we hope Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will act on his pledge to ad­dress the is­sue.

The Prime Min­is­ter was so moved by this tragedy that he promised his Gov­ern­ment would seek to ad­dress in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues which come with home emer­gency safe­ty.

This is ground­ed in the fact that bur­glar-proof­ing in the Mor­ris' home may have been linked to their fail­ure to get out of the struc­ture in time – al­though the fam­i­ly has ad­vanced a the­o­ry that they may have al­so been over­whelmed by smoke, in­ca­pac­i­tat­ing them be­fore they could reach an ex­it door­way.

Still, in his brief state­ment on so­cial me­dia on the is­sue, the Prime Min­is­ter failed to men­tion an­oth­er as­pect of this tragedy - the in­abil­i­ty of fire­fight­ers from the Siparia Fire Sta­tion - which is mere min­utes away from the vic­tims' home - due to a non-func­tion­ing fire ten­der. As a re­sult, a fire ten­der from the Pe­nal Fire Sta­tion had to re­spond, lead­ing to a de­lay which may have af­fect­ed the out­come of the in­ci­dent.

The equip­ment is­sue, of course, is not new to the Fire Ser­vice. Long­stand­ing Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Leo Ramkissoon has been com­plain­ing for years about his mem­bers be­ing ham­pered in con­duct­ing du­ties due to the lack of even the sim­plest para­pher­na­lia for their work, in­clud­ing breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus. Let's al­so not for­get their work in­volves sav­ing lives and prop­er­ty in some of the most dan­ger­ous en­vi­ron­ments at sig­nif­i­cant risk to their own health and safe­ty.

Mr Ramkissoon has not­ed that some eight to nine fire sta­tions are cur­rent­ly dis­abled due to the lack of fire ten­ders. This, nat­u­ral­ly, has hin­dered their abil­i­ty to re­spond to the cur­rent av­er­age 6,000 trou­ble calls per year - with the dry sea­son be­ing one of their busiest pe­ri­ods. The as­so­ci­a­tion has even tak­en le­gal ac­tion to seek to rem­e­dy some of these is­sues. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the sever­i­ty of their com­plaints are on­ly re­alised when cir­cum­stances such as last week­end's tragedy oc­cur and a miss­ing link in the TTFS chain leads to dis­as­ter.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds will ul­ti­mate­ly have to take some of the blame for the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, from Mr Ramkissoon's ac­count, the prob­lem is en­dem­ic and the pub­lic ser­vants re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing equip­ment and oth­er re­lat­ed re­sources for the Fire Ser­vice's op­er­a­tions are sup­plied can al­so not get a free pass in the cur­rent sce­nario.

As such, we hope the Prime Min­is­ter lights a fire un­der Min­is­ter Hinds to deal with some of the press­ing is­sues with­in the Fire Ser­vice - which is more un­der the Min­is­ter's re­mit than con­trol­ling how cit­i­zens im­ple­ment fire safe­ty mea­sures with­in their prop­er­ties.

The ul­ti­mate goal is to en­sure we nev­er have an­oth­er con­ver­sa­tion like the cur­rent one. Lives and prop­er­ty are lit­er­al­ly at stake.