It’s 3pm on a humid Sunday summer afternoon and Antonio Almeida faces an emergency in his house in Borda when his mango tree with over 400 mangoes on it collapses. A part of the tree also collapsed two days prior to this. The Fire Safety Department is bound by rules to rush to the troubled spot and clear any collapsed tree. If it is a threat to a home or public property, it has to be cleared by the assistance of the fire safety department. The head of the team rushed in at the site at Borda with a chainsaw that was not functioning and with a generator that he says was low on diesel.
“In my presence they attached the chainsaw to the owner’s house and it was not functioning. The wiring and connection was bad that it misfired and tripped the electricity in the owner’s home. In another incident, I remember the chainsaw was not functioning and the owners in Housing Bard arranged for their own chainsaw through a source in the pouring rain when their road was blocked at 5am by a tree that collapsed. It’s embarrassing that we depend on a force like this,” explained Joshua Pinto, a witness of the Margao Fire Safety and Rescue Squads high-handedness. Incidentally at the Borda incident, the chainsaw wasn’t functioning and a new one was brought in by the Fire Safety squad, of which the chainsaw itself snapped half way through the job.
“Recently we called the fire safety squad to Aquem because of a tree fall and the team leader and his men accused us of lowering the tree with a sickle and calling them to chop it because it’s a free service even though we told him that this was not the case. He went on to propose that he can get the tree chopped professionally at a price through a tree cutting squad but we’ll have to agree to their price without negotiating which is ridiculous for a government servant to make tree-cutting deals,” stated Allwyn Fernandes from Gogol.
The monsoons are around the corner and no one is taking the onus for cutting precariously hanging trees. The problem that Margao faces is that all electricity cables are underground and hence the Electricity Department doesn’t go about trimming trees. Additionally, the municipality for years has failed to do a study and serve notices to owners to trim the branches of big trees.
“Recently the PWD built new drains in Borda and many big trees were halved at the roots and left there which are now falling in the April-May winds. These tree falls will get worse during the monsoons. Another culprit is the bad quality road widening done with trees chopped and loosened, which causes a threat to life and property,” explained Darshan Dessai, another fireman at the Margao Ambulance. Dessai, an employee at the Fire Safety Department is known for yelling at senior citizens and asking about rates of fruits like mangoes and chickoos in people’s gardens, instead of tending to collapsed trees.
“People should think where to plant trees and must not tell us to consider stupid things like ‘save my house wall or compound wall’, which I find ridiculous,” asserted Dessai while working at a free fall site. The fireman is known for such crass comments despite the senior citizen couple telling him that the tree is four decades old and at the site before they moved in.
The Fire Safety Officer at the department explained that a special vehicle is assigned with ladders, chainsaws and a generator for tree falls, house collapses or any other untoward incident but the problem is that the same firefighting team abandons the fire truck and takes the Goa State Fire Force truck and looks into tree falls especially during the summer and monsoons. Hence if there is a fire situation, it means the team has to rush back to the department and then rush with the fire truck. Also, the lack of staff is a major drawback and a big hindrance to rescue and firefighting
operations.
