00:00It took firefighters approximately six hours to contain the blaze at the building formerly
00:11occupied by the Club de Vegas Casino on Frederick Street in Port of Spain. Fire Association
00:18President Kiongai laments that while fire officers did eventually arrest the blaze,
00:24they encountered numerous challenges. The first, no water in the hydrants.
00:29Officers encountered a water issue initially that was quickly overcome with the support of
00:35additional appliances from both the Sawa Fire Station as well as the Four Roads Fire Station
00:40as well as the support of WASA, boosting the pressure in the area. Of course this problem
00:46could be solved but I believe it's closely tied to the challenges that WASA has and the fact that
00:51they will have several areas under a scheduled system to have water delivered and the fire
00:56service also faces the consequences of that scheduling and however, as I mentioned before,
01:03those issues are often easily rectified where we make contact with WASA informing them that
01:08there is an emergency and there is need to have the pressure boosted in that region.
01:12Guy says while the fire service, like the general population, would love to have 24-7 water supply,
01:19the biggest challenge for fire officers remains a lack of PPE.
01:24Namely, the self-contained breathing apparatus set. That in fact hindered the officers' ability to
01:30maintain an offensive attack of the fire that would have brought the fire under control much
01:36sooner than which it did. At that scene, we had less than, we had three breathing apparatus sets
01:42where we had approximately 30 fire officers. So that would show you just about 10 percent of the
01:47officers had breathing apparatus sets. That's workfully inadequate. We've made representation for
01:53these, this very important component and from our understanding, the delivery should be soon
02:00and we're looking for update from the chief officer and the minister as to when this will likely come
02:06through. The association is awaiting a meeting with the Minister of Homeland Security to discuss
02:11their concerns and suggestions in depth. As I mentioned, the self-contained breathing apparatus set,
02:17the structural firefighting gloves for fire officers, as well as the rescue vest, water rescue vest that we
02:25need, especially at a time like now. And the list goes on and on. So we're asking, not only as we are in the midst of
02:32doing a mid-year budget review, that the administration looks at allocation, allocating adequate resources to
02:40ensure that the fire officers can indeed procure these very critical and essential pieces of equipment.
02:48The cause of the fire is yet to be determined. Renessa Cutting, TV6 News.
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