More fires
Fire officers managed — by all reports just barely - to contain Wednesday’s fire on lower Frederick Street which destroyed three buildings. The officers were, as usual, hampered by a lack of water. Eyewitnesses also complained that the officers were inefficient, because they were "wetting all over the place." But this is just uninformed opinion. Fire-fighting is an expert skill, and the bystanders really have no idea what patterns of destruction the officers were seeing and trying to prevent. Which is not to say that the Fire Service cannot do better. But it appears that the fault lies not in them, but in the authorities. And, in this instance, the authority who must be blamed is Prime Minister Patrick Manning. We go directly to him, because it is Mr Manning who has been pushing, with what some consider megalomaniacal fervour, the remodelling of the capital city. At every opportunity, there is talk of a new seafront development of many buildings, including a five-star hotel; the Government campus; a multi-storey car-park; a new Parliament building; a Social Development tower; and who knows what else? And, even as some of these projects get underway, the city floods every time there is a half-hour of steady rain; the traffic into and within Port-of-Spain on mornings and evenings crawls for miles; and these fires break out and there is never water to quench them. It would seem only common sense that, before embarking on the "development" of the capital city, the Government would fix these fundamental problems. According to PoS Mayor Murchison Brown, 62 new fire hydrants have been installed around the city. Yet these apparently made no difference. But how could they, without water pumping through them? The saltwater mains were empty, and fire officers had to contact WASA to boost the freshwater mains — all of which consumed precious time as fire consumed the three buildings. WASA reported that, out of 200 hydrants in the city, only 20 are in operation. So it seems that the 62 new hydrants Mayor Brown mentioned are just for show. This would be unacceptable at any time, but it is especially unacceptable in a context where the Government is continually touting its 2020 vision, and where the Prime Minister is intent on making the capital city the showpiece of that vision. It was just last week that the Government laid its 367-page Draft National Strategic Plan in Parliament which, among other things, claims to be different from previous plans because it is "driven by the Office of the Prime Minister" and because "mechanisms have been devised both to coordinate execution and track progress against set targets". We would like to see this mechanism applied specifically to the infrastructural requirements of the capital city. That is, the Government should, in short order, publicly set out a plan and time-frame to upgrade hydrants and other fire-fighting equipment; a drainage plan that would prevent flooding during normal rainfall; and a traffic plan to clear congestion in the capital city. Citizens can accept that such projects take time. What citizens cannot accept is the vikey-vie and apparently clueless manner in which the Government is tackling these problems.
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"More fires"