Fire Service Association condemns apparent arson at TSTT; wants stronger laws

The Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion Sec­ond Di­vi­sion is call­ing for the ar­rest and pros­e­cu­tion of those re­spon­si­ble for an ap­par­ent ar­son at­tack at the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) com­pound in Laven­tille, which left a fire­fight­er hos­pi­talised.

In a press re­lease is­sued on Sun­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion con­demned the de­lib­er­ate set­ting of fire to the com­pound on Sat­ur­day night, say­ing cir­cu­lat­ing footage ap­peared to show masked in­di­vid­u­als set­ting the premis­es alight.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said one re­spond­ing fire­fight­er at­tached to the Wright­son Road Fire Sta­tion sus­tained su­per­fi­cial fa­cial in­juries and suf­fered smoke in­hala­tion dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

The fire­fight­er was hos­pi­talised.

The as­so­ci­a­tion wished its col­league a full re­cov­ery and com­mend­ed the re­spond­ing fire crews for their ef­forts.

It al­so called for an ur­gent po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion to iden­ti­fy, ar­rest and pros­e­cute those re­spon­si­ble for the in­ci­dent.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said the Gov­ern­ment should strength­en leg­is­la­tion to hold ar­son­ists ex­plic­it­ly ac­count­able for in­juries and deaths caused to fire­fight­ers and oth­er first re­spon­ders.

It is al­so seek­ing en­hanced penal­ties for such of­fences, as well as pro­vi­sions for com­pen­sa­tion for af­fect­ed emer­gency per­son­nel.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said fire­fight­ers should not be ex­pect­ed to face de­lib­er­ate acts of dan­ger with­out those re­spon­si­ble be­ing held ac­count­able.

“A fire­fight­er’s du­ty to con­front dan­ger must nev­er di­min­ish the ac­count­abil­i­ty of those who de­lib­er­ate­ly cre­ate it,” the state­ment said.

The in­ci­dent has raised con­cerns about the risks faced by emer­gency per­son­nel re­spond­ing to fires al­leged­ly set de­lib­er­ate­ly.

The as­so­ci­a­tion's state­ment comes amid calls for ac­count­abil­i­ty fol­low­ing the fire at the TSTT fa­cil­i­ty, with the or­gan­i­sa­tion urg­ing the au­thor­i­ties to en­sure that those re­spon­si­ble face the full con­se­quences of their ac­tions.

It re­it­er­at­ed that the pro­tec­tion of fire­fight­ers and oth­er first re­spon­ders must be sup­port­ed by stronger le­gal safe­guards and de­ci­sive ac­tion against those who de­lib­er­ate­ly en­dan­ger their lives.