The Saint Lucia Fire Service (SLFS) is urging motorists specifically motorcyclists to practice more caution when riding on the roads due to a high recording of the response to motor vehicular accidents.
Deputy Fire Chief Ditney Downes says a total of two hundred and twenty-one accidents have been recorded so far for 2023 which were all serious accidents where persons were transported to medical facilities.
“In terms of our responses to motor vehicle accidents so far for 2023, we have responded to two hundred and twenty-one motor vehicular accidents island-wide and these are very serious accidents where all of these accidents we responded to we transported persons to medical facilities. Generally, our ambulance responses for the year have been three thousand one hundred and eighty-one ambulance responses in total.” he says.
The chief says when a comparison was conducted it was noted the number of motor vehicular accidents involving motorcycles has increased significantly. He urges motorcyclists to practice more caution when riding.
“An increase in number throughout the year when we do a statistical comparison of our responses to motor vehicle accidents we’re seeing that there is an increase in the number of accidents involving motorcycles and we want to urge motorcyclists to be a bit more cautious on the road, I’m not saying that every time there is a motor vehicle accident involving a motorcycle that they are wrong however I’m just saying that it seems to be more frequent in terms of responding to such incidents.” he continued.
The Saint Lucia Fire Service is in the process of purchasing new extrication equipment to better respond to motor vehicular accidents. The extrication equipment will be used to extract persons trapped in vehicles from accidents, the new battery-operated equipment would only require one emergency personnel to operate which assists in the issue of lack of manpower.
“What we realize is the traditional equipment that we use are very labor intensive, it takes maybe about three fire officers to move them, to operate them and we’re trying to reduce that because we have a manpower issue. The demands from the public is growing whilst our establishment remains constant, so one of the ways we try to counter retract that issue is to move into more modernized equipment.”
Photo: Media Stock
