Following urgent health and safety assessments that prompted the full evacuation of the century-old Rio Claro Fire Station last Sunday, all on-duty fire personnel and emergency response vehicles assigned to the Rio Claro detachment have been temporarily transferred to the nearby Mayaro Fire Station, Acting Chief Fire Officer Ansar Ali confirmed in an exclusive interview with the Trinidad Express earlier this week. Ali, who stepped into the acting leadership role after former Chief Fire Officer Andy Hutchinson began pre-retirement leave, explained that the geographic gap between the two southeastern Trinidad communities will add an average of 8 minutes to emergency response times for calls originating in the Rio Claro coverage zone. The Mayaro facility, which was purpose-built to support a larger operational footprint, has sufficient space to house both full rosters of on-duty personnel and all associated fire equipment without disrupting core service delivery for Mayaro’s local residents, Ali noted. Under the newly implemented transitional operational framework, Mayaro-based firefighters will continue to prioritize calls within their established district boundaries, while the relocated Rio Claro crews will be dispatched exclusively to emergencies in their original service area to minimize service disruptions. For high-priority emergencies occurring in the easternmost pockets of Rio Claro, dispatch protocols will automatically activate support from the nearby Princes Town Fire Station to further reduce potential delays. Ali also outlined ongoing cross-agency efforts to secure a permanent intermediate base within the Rio Claro community to eliminate the added response lag entirely. One leading candidate site is a currently underutilized facility operated by the national Unemployment Relief Programme, which would require formal inter-ministerial approvals, a full structural safety audit, designated parking bays for heavy fire appliances, and targeted retrofitting works to meet fire service operational standards before it can be occupied. Ali emphasized that the original Rio Claro Fire Station, constructed almost entirely of wood roughly 100 years ago, has far outlasted its designed functional lifespan. While incremental structural reinforcement works have been completed across decades of operation, most of the building’s core structural elements remain unmodified aged timber, creating unacceptable occupational health and safety risks for personnel that forced the sudden evacuation. Former Chief Fire Officer Andy Hutchinson separately corroborated that formal safety concerns for the aging facility were first documented in a 2022 structural assessment, and findings highlighting the building’s rapidly deteriorating condition were formally submitted to both the previous national administration and the current government, which took office in 2023. The latest independent engineering review concluded the structure is no longer salvageable, and full demolition and reconstruction of a purpose-built modern fire station at an appropriate Rio Claro location is the only viable long-term solution.