Bruce has seen the changing face of Trinidad and Tobago Fire Service, having been in the service for 37 years. He envisions a fire service that can readily fight fires and perform land and search rescue demands, with the right physical infrastructure as well as access to international best practices and training. He admits that the physical infrastructure is not where it is supposed to be, but believes that the Government is doing its best given the current economic conditions. The Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago Ltd on its website said, “The Ministry of National Security has initiated the design and construction of new Fire Station Projects to provide Trinidad and Tobago Fire Services (TTFS) with modern, safe, functional and efficient facilities to serve the community of Trinidad and Tobago and to meet the requirements of today’s demands.” It said 16 new fire stations are to be constructed on a phased basis.
The Wrightson Road Headquarters are among those to be reconstructed. This, for Bruce, is well on its way to leading TT’s fire service into the future.
However, he said despite the deficiencies at its headquarters the service has been functioning in a “very effective manner.” All of the emergencies the service has encountered it was able to mitigate.
He added, too, that the service has also had a number of rescues for the year. “The major role in the fire service will be rescue.
In the fire service we save lives and property and render humanitarian service.
So our first call is to preserve lives. If there is a major disaster, lives lost. People trapped, people injured. We investigate.” The service, he said, takes a multi-agency approach to disaster, working with other agencies such as the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM) and regional corporations.
While questions might arise with respect to the services equipment, Bruce assured that the equipment used in TT is the same used in what is often described as first world countries.
“We have equipment to respond to emergencies, most of the equipment we will have will be mechanical or in some instances, electrical, and will suffer some kind of wear and tear and deterioration over the years.” But he added, “We are replacing equipment as we go along so we continue to have enough equipment to carry on our jobs.” The service continued to purchase and order equipment and there was “quite a bit of equipment on order right now.” “For the year, we have received, five fire appliances. We also have in terms of vehicles on the way, 12 , inclusive of ambulances,” he said.
While the service could out multiple fires in buildings and had equipment to do so, such as the two hydraulic aerial platforms in Port of Spain, more equipment like those were needed to truly combat such fires. The service, he said, has continued to request equipment, including a hydraulic platform aerial fire-fighting vehicle. Several tankers have already been purchased this year with more “water tenders coming in.” He said the service had an active preventative/maintenance programme in place.
While it was understood that from time to time vehicles “would break down,” he said, “One of the complaints that we have is that sometimes we have stations without vehicles. We have for the out-stations, one water tender attached to the out-station.
If that vehicle goes down and it takes a while to repair, sometimes we don’t have an extra vehicle to send to that station, so we may have to offer coverage from the nearer fire stations. For instance, if Woodbrook does not have an appliance, then you might get coverage from headquarters or Belmont etc. So we always have a coverage plan in place. We try as much to much as possible to always ensure we have appliances in the station.” He said the fleet is about 80 per cent operational. He said new fire stations were coming on stream and there was need to outfit those new stations. Among these are Penal, which he said is 66 per cent complete and which he hopes is up and running for the next fiscal year, Mayaro, which recently became operational and still needs to get equipment.
“The fire service is looking forward to having the Arouca, Point Fortin and Roxborough fire stations started,” he said.
The service did a screening in October last year and received over 10,000 applicants, who are required to go through an interview, physical aptitude test and a medical as well as character tests. He said screening would start from the examination and those who pass are then selected to do the aptitude test, then to the interview and then the character screening.
As for Bruce’s vision for the service, “I would like to see the fire service in the future as having the physical infrastructure to carry out the functions, as well as training to continue to assess international training to remain on the cutting edge.
We want to improve our training facilities where we would have accredited training programmes which would be assessed by our regional colleagues, and we should be equipped to handle any emergency in our changing environment in terms of high rise structures and chemical industries that we have now. Training, equipment physical infrastructure should take us there.”
