Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Res­i­dents of Care­nage en­dured what they de­scribed as a “trau­mat­ic and fright­en­ing” night af­ter a fast-mov­ing hill­side fire crept to with­in me­tres of their homes, forc­ing some fam­i­lies to evac­u­ate while oth­ers scram­bled to pro­tect their prop­er­ties.

In the af­ter­math, Coun­cil­lor for Ch­aguara­mas/Pt Cumana, Kevon Williams, re­newed ur­gent calls for the re­in­state­ment of re­for­esta­tion work­ers, warn­ing that com­mu­ni­ties re­main dan­ger­ous­ly ex­posed as fires con­tin­ue to threat­en hill­side ar­eas.

Williams said the for­mer forestry crews, once re­spon­si­ble for cut­ting and main­tain­ing fire trails and co­or­di­nat­ing com­mu­ni­ty re­sponse, rep­re­sent the “on­ly prac­ti­cal so­lu­tion” to pre­vent­ing small fires from es­ca­lat­ing in­to ma­jor in­ci­dents.

“We have a team ready, no re­train­ing re­quired, fa­mil­iar with the ter­rain,” he said. “Re­in­state these work­ers so res­i­dents can have a fight­ing chance.”

His ap­peal fol­lows what res­i­dents de­scribed as a “night­mare” as flames ad­vanced to with­in ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 me­tres—and in some cas­es even clos­er—to homes in Up­per Seav­iew Hill and Up­per Neck­les Dri­ve.

Some fam­i­lies evac­u­at­ed as a pre­cau­tion, while oth­ers re­mained, wet­ting their sur­round­ings in an ef­fort to slow the spread of the fire.

Williams said the ex­pe­ri­ence was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tress­ing for chil­dren and the el­der­ly.

“Peo­ple gen­uine­ly felt the fire could have en­tered their homes and de­stroyed every­thing,” he said.

While emer­gency ser­vices re­spond­ed, the coun­cil­lor ar­gued that the cur­rent ap­proach is large­ly re­ac­tive, re­ly­ing on the Fire Ser­vice to ex­tin­guish blazes af­ter they ig­nite rather than pre­vent­ing them.

“That is just putting out the fire,” he said. “What about pre­ven­tion? Fire trails, ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion—that is what the re­for­esta­tion work­ers pro­vid­ed.”

He added that al­though the dis­as­ter man­age­ment unit of the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion was con­tact­ed and re­spond­ed, its role is lim­it­ed.

“They show up af­ter the dis­as­ter. They are not em­bed­ded in pre­ven­tion like forestry work­ers, whose core func­tion is ex­act­ly that,” he said.

Williams warned that in­creas­ing­ly dry con­di­tions are like­ly to in­ten­si­fy both the fre­quen­cy and sever­i­ty of hill­side fires, mak­ing proac­tive mea­sures crit­i­cal.

He de­scribed the cur­rent ap­proach as “a plas­ter on a very deep sore,” in­sist­ing that re­in­stat­ing the dis­missed work­ers would be both im­me­di­ate and cost-ef­fec­tive.

De­spite the po­lit­i­cal un­der­tones of the is­sue, Williams framed his ap­peal as hu­man­i­tar­i­an.

“I am not an­gry. I am not po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed—I am peo­ple-pow­ered,” he said. “Pun­ish me if you must, but do not pun­ish the peo­ple.”

Two weeks ago, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen said the work­ers had been ab­sorbed in­to the cor­po­ra­tion’s dis­as­ter man­age­ment unit, adding that the move pro­vid­ed them with mean­ing­ful em­ploy­ment.