San Juan Business Association renews call for temporary fire station

The San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion is re­new­ing its call for a tem­po­rary fire sta­tion and emer­gency am­bu­lance ser­vice in the dis­trict, say­ing two re­cent in­ci­dents have re­in­forced the need for faster emer­gency re­sponse and stronger pub­lic safe­ty mea­sures.

In a me­dia re­lease on Mon­day, the as­so­ci­a­tion said the re­cent med­ical emer­gency in­volv­ing for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira at Re­al TV's Croisée stu­dio and an armed rob­bery at a near­by med­ical cen­tre high­light­ed long­stand­ing con­cerns about emer­gency re­sponse and se­cu­ri­ty in the area. The re­lease was signed by the as­so­ci­a­tion's pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, Dr Joseph Crooks.

The as­so­ci­a­tion is propos­ing a tem­po­rary fire sta­tion with emer­gency am­bu­lance ser­vices to pro­vide cov­er­age be­tween San Juan and St Joseph while land is iden­ti­fied and al­lo­cat­ed for the con­struc­tion of a per­ma­nent fire sta­tion.

It said the med­ical emer­gency at Re­al TV demon­strat­ed the im­por­tance of hav­ing emer­gency ser­vices read­i­ly avail­able, adding that the ab­sence of a func­tion­ing fire sta­tion could re­sult in crit­i­cal de­lays when res­i­dents, em­ploy­ees, cus­tomers or vis­i­tors re­quire ur­gent as­sis­tance.

"A med­ical emer­gency can hap­pen to any­one, at any time. The res­i­dents and busi­ness­es of San Juan and the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties de­serve time­ly ac­cess to emer­gency ser­vices when lives may be at risk," the re­lease said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so raised con­cerns about the re­cent armed rob­bery at the Life Care Med­ical and Den­tal Cen­tre, say­ing the in­ci­dent un­der­scored the need for in­creased po­lice pa­trols through­out the dis­trict.

It is call­ing for co­or­di­nat­ed foot and mo­bile pa­trols by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and, where ap­pro­pri­ate, the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said med­ical pro­fes­sion­als and oth­er busi­ness op­er­a­tors should not have to risk their lives while pro­vid­ing es­sen­tial ser­vices, warn­ing that con­tin­ued vi­o­lent crime could force health­care providers and busi­ness­es to re­con­sid­er op­er­at­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty.

It not­ed that San Juan and sur­round­ing dis­tricts are home to nu­mer­ous med­ical of­fices, phar­ma­cies, com­mer­cial es­tab­lish­ments and oth­er es­sen­tial ser­vice providers that re­quire ad­e­quate emer­gency and se­cu­ri­ty sup­port to con­tin­ue serv­ing the pub­lic safe­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said it is look­ing for­ward to ur­gent ac­tion to ad­dress what it de­scribed as two im­por­tant is­sues af­fect­ing San Juan, Barataria, Aranguez, St Joseph and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira is re­cov­er­ing af­ter suf­fer­ing a med­ical episode while ap­pear­ing live on Con­ver­sa­tions with Zelisa on Re­al TV last Thurs­day. Host and CEO Zelisa Boodoos­ingh said she and staff took Nunez-Tesheira to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex af­ter de­ter­min­ing it would take too long for an am­bu­lance to ar­rive.

Last Wednes­day, three armed men robbed two doc­tors and an­oth­er man at the Life Care Med­ical and Den­tal Cen­tre af­ter one of the sus­pects posed as a pa­tient. Po­lice said the men es­caped with US$20,000, TT$40,000, jew­ellery and a cell­phone.