Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les 

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent 

Head of the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion, Keone Guy, has raised con­cerns that the new bil­lion-dol­lar ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal at Crown Point will lack prop­er fire cov­er­age, as the near­by fire sta­tion re­mains in poor con­di­tion, with on­ly one of three ten­ders func­tion­ing and man­pow­er in sham­bles.

He told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that as of­fi­cials pre­pare to com­mis­sion the ter­mi­nal to­mor­row, he wants to seize the op­por­tu­ni­ty to call for a new, ful­ly equipped fire sta­tion to han­dle emer­gen­cies at an air­port of that mag­ni­tude.

Guy said the Crown Point Fire Sta­tion has been in a di­lap­i­dat­ed state for years, with poor elec­tri­cal wiring pre­vent­ing up­grades such as air con­di­tion­ing. He al­so re­vealed that of­fi­cers lack ba­sic ameni­ties, in­clud­ing func­tion­al toi­lets. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the sta­tion does not have a sin­gle breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus set, se­vere­ly ham­per­ing their abil­i­ty to re­spond to fires, in­clud­ing po­ten­tial in­ci­dents at the new air­port.

Guy said the sta­tion’s con­di­tion and lack of re­sources were in breach of In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ICAO) stan­dards. He said any emer­gen­cies at the new air­port re­quir­ing fire ser­vice sup­port could not be ef­fec­tive­ly han­dled.

“To con­struct a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar air­port with­out spend­ing a sin­gle dol­lar to en­sure the fire ser­vice is pro­vid­ed with up­grad­ed in­fra­struc­ture and ve­hi­cles is just an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the Gov­ern­ment’s ne­glect of the fire ser­vice and pub­lic safe­ty in gen­er­al,” Guy said.

He claimed, “The of­fi­cers there (in To­ba­go) don’t have a sin­gle breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus set for any sta­tion is­land­wide, and the air­port is no dif­fer­ent. So should there be an in­ci­dent at the air­port, whether in the ex­ist­ing build­ing or any­where else on the strip, the fire ser­vice’s abil­i­ty to re­spond is se­vere­ly ham­pered..”

Ac­cord­ing to ICAO stan­dards, air­port fire sta­tions must be strate­gi­cal­ly lo­cat­ed to en­sure a max­i­mum three-minute re­sponse time and be equipped with fire­fight­ing ve­hi­cles, ro­bust com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems, and ad­e­quate stor­age for ex­tin­guish­ing agents. In T&T, these stan­dards are en­forced by the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty and the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty to en­sure com­pli­ance with glob­al safe­ty reg­u­la­tions.

Calls to Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Andy Hutchin­son went unan­swered.

How­ev­er, a se­nior fire of­fi­cer told Guardian Me­dia the claims were false, in­sist­ing the fire sta­tion was ful­ly ca­pa­ble of re­spond­ing to and han­dling all cat­e­gories of emer­gen­cies at the air­port in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al avi­a­tion laws.

The of­fi­cial said there was suf­fi­cient man­pow­er and equip­ment. While ad­mit­ting some ve­hi­cles need­ed re­pairs, he de­nied that on­ly one fire ten­der was func­tion­al.

The source ad­mit­ted the sta­tion was in a di­lap­i­dat­ed state and need­ed re­pairs, which were ini­tial­ly es­ti­mat­ed at $8.6 mil­lion years ago but have now risen to $28 mil­lion fol­low­ing up­dat­ed as­sess­ments.

The of­fi­cial said the on­ly is­sue now was the ab­sence of a ded­i­cat­ed sub­sta­tion for of­fi­cers and a fire ten­der on stand­by for emer­gen­cies on the ramp, such as fu­el spills or mi­nor in­ci­dents like loose paint. In such cas­es, of­fi­cers would have to re­spond from the main sta­tion.