President of the Fire Services Association Leo Ramkissoon shows the lack of a fire truck at the Belmont Fire Station yesterday.

A fire of­fi­cer es­caped death on Mon­day af­ter he col­lapsed af­ter his breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus re­port­ed­ly mal­func­tioned dur­ing a fire in Ari­ma.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that fire of­fi­cer Kelvin Headley, who is at­tached to the Ari­ma Fire Sta­tion, was re­spond­ing to a res­i­den­tial fire when he col­lapsed. Pre­lim­i­nary re­ports in­di­cate that Headley suf­fered from smoke in­hala­tion af­ter the equip­ment fail­ure and had to be rushed to the hos­pi­tal for treat­ment. He re­port­ed­ly com­plained to col­leagues about feel­ing un­well be­fore re­ceiv­ing ini­tial treat­ment from them. He was lat­er tak­en to hos­pi­tal for fur­ther treat­ment, dis­charged and was rest­ing at home last evening.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Fire Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Leo Ramkissoon said the call for breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus for fire of­fi­cers had now come to haunt of­fi­cers, as it did with of­fi­cer Headley.

Two res­i­dents were in­jured in the fire.

“We have very lit­tle to no breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sets avail­able to fire of­fi­cers at the 24 fire sta­tions across Trinidad and To­ba­go, for the most part, they have no breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus that’s what­so­ev­er avail­able. And there­fore, this is a sit­u­a­tion that is no dif­fer­ent than let’s say the po­lice­man go­ing in­to a gun­fight with­out a bul­let­proof vest, he is fac­ing bul­lets com­ing from all dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions, and he has no pro­tec­tion what­so­ev­er. The dif­fer­ence with this sit­u­a­tion is that the fire­man can­not evade the smoke what­so­ev­er, he will suf­fer long term con­se­quences be­cause of that con­stant in­hala­tion of that smoke,” Ramkissoon said yes­ter­day.

He added, “The point is that this call that we have been mak­ing for equip­ment, breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sets in par­tic­u­lar, and in gen­er­al, more at­ten­tion to be placed on en­sur­ing the Fire Ser­vice is prop­er­ly equipped, is a very, very se­ri­ous call not just for the safe­ty and well be­ing of the of­fi­cers but in the in­ter­est of the pub­lic. Be­cause with­out those pieces of equip­ment, our ef­forts to res­cue per­sons and to ef­fec­tive­ly en­gage in fire­fight­ing to pre­vent loss is se­ri­ous­ly stymied with­out all that nec­es­sary equip­ment.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent ex­plained that of­fi­cers al­ready ex­pe­ri­ence health is­sues on the job.

“We what we are see­ing is of­fi­cers, es­pe­cial­ly of­fi­cers on re­tire­ment, are so com­mon, im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter they leave the job they are suf­fer­ing can­cers and so on. There’s a high­er preva­lence of can­cers. And I’m not speak­ing here out­side of what em­pir­i­cal da­ta is be­ing pro­vid­ed, the sci­ence is show­ing that fire of­fi­cers will suf­fer can­cers and oth­er long-term ill­ness­es at a much high­er rate than any oth­er sec­tor of so­ci­ety be­cause of the pro­longed ex­po­sure to these car­cino­gens and so on and tox­ins that are con­tained in the smoke,” Ramkissoon said.

“We are ac­tu­al­ly, on a dai­ly ba­sis when we re­port the work, we are agree­ing to give up our own health and safe­ty of our life. And while that is a no­ble ges­ture, one would ex­pect that the state would at least, in short, pro­vide us with the nec­es­sary equip­ment so that we could save our­selves, pro­long our lives a lit­tle longer and be able to at least ef­fec­tive­ly pro­tect the pub­lic. The pub­lic is at risk.”

He added that their woes are enor­mous.

“There are sev­en fire sta­tions across from that and to be good to­day, some­times there are nine, some­times there are 11 that are with­out fire trucks on a dai­ly ba­sis.”

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to Ramkissoon’s claims, Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice Pub­lic Re­la­tions and Wel­fare and Re­search, Di­vi­sion­al Fire Of­fi­cer, Dar­son Dasent, said, “Dur­ing the fire­fight­ing op­er­a­tion, the fire­fight­er was ac­tu­al­ly do­ing some move­ment of equip­ment out­side of the build­ing when he start­ed to com­plain about not feel­ing well with breath­ing prob­lems, so im­me­di­ate­ly his col­leagues at­tend­ed to him. At the same time, EHS came on the scene and they at­tend­ed to him and gave him some oxy­gen and mon­e­tised vi­tal signs.

Dasent added, “I think it’s in the pub­lic do­main or this time that we are in some chal­lenges with this equip­ment, but we are work­ing fever­ish­ly to al­le­vi­ate that prob­lem, but we are in our de­fen­sive mode most of the time in pro­tect­ing our fire­fight­ers when we are do­ing our op­er­a­tion as best as we can.” (With re­port­ing by Ot­to Car­ring­ton)

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