HELP! Fire Danger In New Kingston...

Road	No. of Apts. / Townhouse Complexes	Total Fire Hydrants	Defective Hydrants	Working Hydrants
Musgrave  Close	1	1	0	1
Musgrave Ave	1	2	0	2
Linstone Crescent	4	4	0	4
Gladstone Avenue	2	1	0	1
Montrose Road	1	0	0	0
Hopefield Avenue	10	6	5	1
Hilcrest Avenue	4	2	0	2
Clieveden Avenue	8	0	0	0
Clieveden Close	1	1	0	1
Donhead Avenue	6	5	3	2
Seymour Avenue	4	2	1	1
Tyndhurst Avenue	5	1	1	0
Seaview Avenue	7	1	1	0
Worthington Terrace	3	2	0	2
Worthington Avenue	8	2	1	1
Haining Road	4	1	1	0
Pawsey Road	1	1	0	1
Lords Road	1	3	1	2
Oval Road	1	0	0	0
Musgrave Avenue	1	1	0	1
Comlin Bank Avenue	1	0	0	0
Braemar Avenue	4	1	0	1
Upper Braemar Avenue	1	0	0	0
Upper Musgrave Avenue	2	0	0	0
Argyle Road	3	0	0	0
Upper Montrose Road	0	2	2	0
Windsor Avenue	0	1	1	0
Fairway Avenue	1	0	0	0
Kensington Avenue	9	0	0	0
Seatonhurst Avenue	3	1	0	1
Gary Close	2	1	0	1
Brompton Avenue	5	0	0	0
Brompton Terrace	0	1	1	0
Retreat Avenue	2	1	0	1
Lady Musgrave Road	11	5	3	2
Total	117	49	21	28

The communities of Seymour Lands (commonly referred to as the Golden Triangle) and the residential sections of New Kingston are at serious risk from fire. The nearby community of Trafalgar Park though not highlighted here, faces similar challenges. This, as a survey conducted by the Trafalgar Council on December 13, 2008 has revealed that approximately 43 percent of the fire hydrants which are supposed to service the communities are defective. Further some 27.4 percent (32 out of 117) of apartments and townhouse complexes have no discernible access to any public fire hydrant. Whereas no particular competence is claimed regarding whether or not these hydrants deemed as being defective are still able to provide some semblance of service, defective in this context is identified as those hydrants which have no caps, are obviously broken or are skewed at angles perhaps after being damaged in a vehicular accident. For the remaining hydrants, there is an assumption for the purposes of this discussion that given that they all have caps in place and have no obvious damage, they suffer from no other defect and are thereby deemed to be working. In any event, the communities are grossly underserved in terms of fire hydrant placement and in fact the current 49 hydrants that have been placed are deemed to provide less than 20 percent of the requisite coverage. This, on the basis that international fire codes dictate, that hydrants must be placed within 250 feet of any building to be protected. However, in Jamaica the more recent acquisitions of fire trucks (commencing in 2006) which have been characterized as “state of the art”, are fitted with hoses that are at maximum 200 feet long. Hence, the placement of fire hydrants must as a matter of common sense, be no more than 200 feet from any building to be protected in Jamaica. This is obviously not happening in the communities in question.

This matter is compounded further, when it is recognized that these “state of the art” fire trucks are equipped with 36-foot ladders. These ladders are only able to facilitate fire fighters in buildings no more than 3-storeys high and cognizance must be taken of the fact that in recent times the Town and County Planning Authority (TCPA), which receives its technical support from the National Environment and planning Agency (NEPA), and the KSAC (local authority) have approved several 4-storey apartment complexes in the communities being described here. The height of a single storey ranges between 10 and 12 feet, so that a 4-storey building would be 40 to 48 feet high not including the roof and hence a 36-foot ladder would be of little use on the top floors or roofs of many of these densely populated structures in the event of a fire. Indeed on Braemar Avenue and Argyle Road in Seymour Lands, there are 4 such buildings but Braemar Ave only has one (1) seemingly functional fire hydrant and Argyle Road has none. An even more frightening scenario obtains on Kensington Avenue in New Kingston where 9 multi-storey apartment and townhouse complexes have been built with the majority being 4-storey structures and there isn’t a single fire hydrant. It must be noted, that whereas emphasis is being placed here on the high density apartment buildings and townhouse complexes, there are still a considerable number of single dwelling houses in these communities, which in the main are completely unprotected.

This issue is further compounded when it is recognized that the authorities have unilaterally altered the density ratios in the community from 30 habitable rooms per acre to 50 habitable rooms per acre where there is access to a central sewage line and have also altered the setback distances to no more than 5 feet per floor. Further, though the site coverage standards set by NEPA, dictate that for apartment and townhouse complexes no more than 33 1/3 percent of the land should be used for structures and for single dwelling houses no more 50 percent can be used, this is treated with impunity with site ratios routinely approaching 75 percent, particularly for the apartment and townhouse complexes. Indeed, the plot ratios are so high that it is estimated that the 117 townhouse and apartment complexes identified in the Trafalgar Council survey, boast an average of 35 units per complex. So there are approximately some 4,095 such units in the communities surveyed with an estimated occupancy of 12,285 persons. This is even more worrisome when cognizance is taken of the fact that there are a number of schools in the community where the functionality of the hydrants is suspect, notably those on Hopefield Avenue and Hilcrest Avenue. In other words, given the proximity to adjoining properties, the overbuilding and the high densities involved, a single fire can have catastrophic consequences on the neighbourhoods, with there being no clear mitigation strategy in place.

It is therefore clear, that the authorities must, as a matter of urgency conduct a comprehensive audit of the fire hydrants in the communities described and effect repairs to those that are damaged and make arrangements to install the requisite number of hydrants to provide full protection to the communities. There is also need for a forensic audit of the building approval mechanism as the provision of fire hydrants form part and parcel of infrastructure requirements and it speaks volumes about the integrity of an approval process involving the TCPA, NEPA and the KSAC whereby, for example 8 apartment and townhouse complexes are approved and built on Clieveden Avenue in Seymour Lands and 9 similar complexes are approved and built on Kensington Avenue in New Kingston respectively, with absolutely no public fire hydrant provision being made.