Fire Service needs help

The government’s appointment of a three-member committee to investigate the circumstances of the house fire in which Minister in the Ministry of Education, Lisa Morris-Julian, and two of her children – one just six years old – died, must lead to a deeper examination of how effective the Fire Service is to respond to fire calls and save lives.

On December 20, the National Security Minister announced the appointment of the committee, which was empowered just four days after the tragic blaze, and some might consider the response to be unusually vigorous and thorough compared to the official reaction to other house fire fatalities.

In June, Joseph “Bear” Richards, 69, of Hermitage Road in Caratal died in a blaze that consumed his three-bedroom wooden house, while another 75-year-old pensioner, Kenneth “Hawkeye” Lewis died five months later in a fire that consumed his Pleasantville home.

In September, Angela Ali, 53, and her daughter-in-law Ambika Carerra-Ali died in a house fire.

In November, Anna Love-Taitt, an autistic 11-year-old, died of injuries from a fire in her home in Malabar, Arima. Each of these deaths is distressing and a tragedy for the families affected by them, but the government finds itself between a rock and a hard place in this matter.

Cabinet can’t treat the death of a popular minister of state lightly. Still, a sensitive approach would also acknowledge the importance of using this investigation to bring clarity to the reality of Fire Service operations and bring real improvements.

That’s doubly important because the relationship between the state and the Fire Service has been deteriorating long before the unseemly fracas between the Public Utilities Minister and the Fire Service (TTFS) in the wake of the deadly blaze.

Another war of words erupted in April between Fire Service Association president Keone Guy over the supply of hundreds of self-contained breathing units, requested in 2021 but only put out to tender in 2024, and Mr Hinds’ continued assertion that the TTFS was fully equipped.

Mr Guy claimed there were ten functional breathing units available to 2,000 firefighters. Mr Hinds dismissed those who disagreed with him as “confusionists and bacchanalists.”

The Fire Service Retirees Association’s call for more resources for the Fire Service, particularly in the face of reductions in the budgetary allocation for equipment and vehicle purchases in 2025, should be taken seriously. The TTFS spent just $714,000 out of its 2024 budget of $11.2 million, and its allocation was cut to just $4 million for 2025, the estimated cost of a new fire engine. The state’s investigation into this tragedy should explore equipment shortfalls and consider the population density of areas served by fire stations to assess whether they are suitably equipped to handle fire calls.

Working with home insurers, evaluators and other professional stakeholders, the state should commit to setting and monitoring fire safety standards for all properties in TT.