RIO CLARO FIRE STATION ABANDONED

SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shar­lene.ram­per­sad

@guardian.co.tt

Months af­ter Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty (OSH) in­spec­tors iden­ti­fied over 20 health and safe­ty vi­o­la­tions at the Rio Claro Fire Sta­tion and warned the Fire Ser­vice about its di­lap­i­dat­ed state, fire­fight­ers yes­ter­day closed and aban­doned the sta­tion in­def­i­nite­ly.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area be­fore the clo­sure yes­ter­day, there were sev­er­al fire of­fi­cers on the com­pound. All de­clined to speak, say­ing they were not au­tho­rised to do so.

There were al­so sev­er­al fire ser­vice ve­hi­cles on the com­pound, in­clud­ing a pick-up, an am­bu­lance and a fire truck. An air con­di­tion­ing unit was seen in the bed of the pick-up, while there was a wa­ter pump among oth­er items in the am­bu­lance. Sev­er­al men, not in uni­form, were seen se­cur­ing the main door­way with pow­er tools.

About half an hour lat­er, all the of­fi­cers left and the gate was se­cured with pieces of wire.

Fire Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion Sec­ond Di­vi­sion pres­i­dent Keone Guy lat­er told Guardian Me­dia a de­ci­sion was tak­en on Oc­to­ber 28 to va­cate the fire sta­tion. He said af­ter the OSH re­port, the Fire Ser­vice was giv­en time to fix the is­sues iden­ti­fied.

“That did not take place. The of­fi­cers, how­ev­er, con­tin­ued to oc­cu­py in good faith hop­ing that the con­cerns would have been ad­dressed,” Guy said.

“But the re­al­i­ty is that the sta­tion needs to be re­built; it needs to be bro­ken down, it would have served its life and we have re­ports from the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture en­gi­neers in­di­cat­ing just as much,” he added.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that on Oc­to­ber 22, a clean­er from the Min­istry of Labour as­signed to the sta­tion was in­jured when her foot went through the wood­en floor in­side the build­ing. The woman was tak­en to the Ma­yaro Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where she was treat­ed and dis­charged.

In the in­ter­im re­port to the As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer on the in­ci­dent, the of­fi­cer in charge of the sta­tion wrote, “Di­rect in­struc­tions were is­sued to FS­SO Har­riot to im­me­di­ate­ly cor­don off and phys­i­cal­ly iso­late the com­pro­mised cor­ri­dor area us­ing safe­ty cones and high-vis­i­bil­i­ty bar­ri­er tape to pre­vent sec­ondary in­jury or fur­ther struc­tur­al col­lapse.”

Days lat­er, on Oc­to­ber 26, the as­so­ci­a­tion’s as­sis­tant sec­re­tary, South, An­cel Lemessy, wrote to the OS­HA chief in­spec­tor, ask­ing for an ur­gent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the is­sues at the fire sta­tion.

“I re­quest an ur­gent in­spec­tion and in­ves­ti­ga­tion of con­di­tions at Rio Claro Fire Sta­tion and im­me­di­ate mea­sures to pro­tect fire­fight­ers, an­cil­lary staff and oth­er per­sons us­ing the premis­es. The at­tached records show that struc­tur­al con­cerns pre­ced­ed an ac­tu­al floor­ing fail­ure and in­jury. They al­so doc­u­ment de­fects af­fect­ing the safe­ty, wel­fare and dig­ni­ty of fe­male per­son­nel,” Lemessy wrote.

His let­ter al­so raised sev­er­al oth­er is­sues, in­clud­ing al­le­ga­tions that a fe­male fire of­fi­cer was in­struct­ed to “lock the door” and use a male toi­let when she com­plained that the fe­male toi­let was not work­ing. Lemessy said the fe­male of­fi­cer was even­tu­al­ly sent home for the day.

“I con­sid­er this re­sponse hap­haz­ard and in­ad­e­quate. A di­rec­tion to lock the male wash­room door did not es­tab­lish that suit­able al­ter­na­tive fa­cil­i­ties, pri­va­cy, safe ac­cess and arrange­ments for all per­son­nel had been as­sessed,” he wrote.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Lalchan Ar­joon told Guardian Me­dia that a build­ing to tem­porar­i­ly house the fire sta­tion in Rio Claro has been iden­ti­fied and a de­ci­sion should be made some­time in the com­ing days.

“And they said that it may have been the build­ing iden­ti­fied for a URP of­fice,” Ar­joon said.

“When we look at it, yes, there will be some mod­i­fi­ca­tion to be able to house the fire sta­tion if it is be­ing grant­ed, if it’s be­ing used. That still has to be con­firmed as soon as we can,” he added.

He ac­knowl­edged that the pub­lic may be con­cerned about slow re­sponse times.

Ar­joon said a fire ten­der and fire of­fi­cers were on stand­by at the Ma­yaro Fire Sta­tion to re­spond to any emer­gen­cies in Rio Claro.

“But I want­ed to as­sure the mem­bers of the pub­lic that we have a re­sponse from Ma­yaro, yes, it may take a lit­tle longer time, but there is a re­sponse.”

Ar­joon said the Fire Ser­vice ad­min­is­tra­tion has been ad­vo­cat­ing for some time for a new fire sta­tion in Rio Claro.

“When I spoke to my de­vel­op­ment sec­tion, they told me that they have had the Rio Claro Fire Sta­tion ear­marked (for re­con­struc­tion), but that may come up, I think, in 2027 or 2028, based on the ad­vice they gave me. So yes, they are plan­ning, they want to get a new sta­tion built there,” Ar­joon said.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der on the sta­tion’s clo­sure, but up un­til press time, there was no re­sponse.

In Rio Claro yes­ter­day, sev­er­al peo­ple who spoke to Guardian Me­dia ex­pressed sur­prise that the sta­tion had been closed.

Nar­ine Ma­habir, who works at the near­by Rio Claro Mar­ket, said he was told the sta­tion had been closed on Fri­day but he didn’t be­lieve it.

“I feel no­body knows noth­ing about that,” Ma­habir said.

He said be­tween 1995 and 2000, ef­forts were be­ing made to re­pair the fire sta­tion.

“No gov­ern­ment don’t con­tin­ue what an­oth­er gov­ern­ment was do­ing ... since Pan­day was in pow­er that fire sta­tion was fix­ing. If you no­tice, the back of the fire sta­tion is con­crete, is the front part was to do, and that re­main just so, no­body con­tin­ue it,” he said.

Ma­habir said if there is a ma­jor fire in Rio Claro in the near fu­ture, the re­sults could be dis­as­trous.

“If you com­ing from Ma­yaro, that’s 14 miles, if you com­ing from Princes Town, that’s 18 miles, that time you done gone al­ready.”

Res­i­dent Mar­garet Fuentes said she too did not know of the clo­sure. She said it was both a good and bad thing.

“I’ll be glad that we get a new one like Ma­yaro ... but look where they gone, Ma­yaro. How fast they will come up here in an emer­gency? We will have to get buck­et brigade,” she said.

An­drew Granthum called for the Fire Ser­vice to get its act to­geth­er, say­ing the peo­ple of Rio Claro would be in dan­ger with­out a func­tion­ing fire sta­tion.