Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Andy Hutchin­son has re­ject­ed claims by Keon Guy, pres­i­dent of the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion, re­gard­ing the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the Crown Point Fire Sta­tion in sup­port­ing the new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal.

Guy told Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day that the sta­tion’s re­sources were in­suf­fi­cient and did not com­ply with In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ICAO) stan­dards.

In a press re­lease, Hutchin­son said the Crown Point Fire Sta­tion is prop­er­ly staffed and equipped to han­dle all air­port emer­gen­cies in line with ICAO stan­dards, main­tain­ing the air­port’s Cat­e­go­ry 9 sta­tus. He as­sured that the sta­tion is ful­ly pre­pared for any po­ten­tial in­ci­dents.

The re­lease al­so men­tioned that the fire ser­vice had been con­sult­ed from the out­set about the air­port’s de­sign and the nec­es­sary re­sources to meet fire­fight­ing re­quire­ments.

Mean­while, Guy stood by his claims and called for an au­dit to ver­i­fy them. Mo­ments af­ter the re­lease was sent out, he told Guardian Me­dia, “Of course, I stand by my claims. The re­ports came from of­fi­cers work­ing there. They have re­port­ed to us a se­vere short­age, not on­ly of breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sets but sev­er­al de­fi­cien­cies in the ap­pli­ances avail­able. A sim­ple au­dit, in­ter­nal or ex­ter­nal, will prove de­fi­cien­cies ex­ist at the Crown Point Fire Sta­tion.”