Fire officer urges revellers: Don’t ‘wine’ on service response vehicles

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Deputy Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Ansar Ali is urg­ing the pub­lic to avoid “gy­rat­ing” on fire ve­hi­cles in tran­sit, as he says this can cause un­nec­es­sary de­lays for pos­si­ble life-threat­en­ing emer­gen­cies.

Ali made the call dur­ing an in­ter-agency me­dia brief­ing at the VIP lounge of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah’s (QPS) Grand Stand yes­ter­day, where he said that while fire ve­hi­cles will like­ly take al­ter­nate routes away from the pa­rade cen­tres for Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day, there may be oc­ca­sions where they have no choice but to dri­ve along­side mas­quer­aders.

With this in mind, he im­plored rev­ellers to steer clear of emer­gency ve­hi­cles, warn­ing that while ‘win­ing’ on fire trucks or ten­ders may be seen as harm­less fun, it could have se­ri­ous con­se­quences, es­pe­cial­ly for peo­ple await­ing life-sav­ing sup­port.

“Re­mem­ber, we may not al­ways be able to use al­ter­nate routes; some­times we may need to pass through routes that the rev­ellers will be on and we ask you to stay clear.

‘When you see the ap­pli­ances... our fire trucks en route, please steer clear of them.

“Over the years we have seen peo­ple gy­rat­ing in front of fire ser­vice ve­hi­cles whilst they are re­spond­ing to calls and it caus­es them to slow their re­sponse... please de­sist from mak­ing such a prac­tice a habit.”

A sim­i­lar call was made by ACP North-West Garvin Hen­ry dur­ing a TTPS me­dia brief­ing last month, when he urged rev­ellers not to wine on po­lice of­fi­cers as this could dis­tract them and im­pair their abil­i­ty to re­spond to emer­gen­cies.

“It caus­es an un­nec­es­sary dis­trac­tion to po­lice of­fi­cers and as you high­light­ed an in­ci­dent that took place on the (Ari­api­ta) Av­enue and in our ef­forts to be alert and quick to re­spond, we would want the pub­lic to know that type of ac­tiv­i­ty as tempt­ing as it may be to some... but re­frain from it.

“It doesn’t add to our abil­i­ty to re­spond, it on­ly dis­tracts us.”

Dur­ing Thurs­day’s me­dia brief­ing, Ali warned rev­ellers to keep their dis­tance from large trucks in bands to avoid be­ing crushed.

He al­so re­port­ed that leave for all fire of­fi­cers was can­celled un­til Ash Wednes­day morn­ing, in a bid to of­fer height­ened sup­port for emer­gen­cies.

He not­ed that Land Search and Res­cue teams with the Fire Ser­vice have been placed on stand­by for peo­ple near beach­es or hik­ing trails in the event of any in­ci­dents.

Fire of­fi­cers, he said, have al­so been as­signed to com­mand op­er­a­tions cen­tres.