The public is being urged to refrain from parking vehicles indiscriminately around the island, with emphasis on The City.
This appeal came from Minister of Home Affairs and Information, Wilfred Abrahams, and Chief Fire Officer at the Barbados Fire Service (BFS), Errol Maynard, during the inspection of three new Scania Angloco fire tenders, in the Port of Bridgetown, yesterday, Thursday, June 13.
The two officials pleaded with the public to be considerate when parking vehicles, since over the years, the BFS had been hampered in its ability to respond to fires due to indiscriminate parking.
Minister Abrahams stated:
“The issue is not necessarily the size of the roads. In many cases, we have the issue of Bridgetown with the size of the roads, but often it’s people indiscriminately parking, the roadside mechanics, the persons who are dumping so that is what causes the issues. Our issues basically are a lot less infrastructural and more manmade.”
“So, we’re urging people to park responsibly. The vehicle that you park might be blocking a fire tender trying to get to your house, so you may lose your house. So, we need to all work together,” Abrahams emphasised.
Maynard disclosed that the department has an order for smaller fire tenders to be added to the existing fleet.
“Although these are the standard size and these are the ones that give you maximum utility, we have two smaller vehicles already on order that can go into those small nook and crannies … really neat populated areas. So, those have already been ordered and we’re hopeful that they would be here sometime in the early new year,” he said.
(GIS).
