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Deputy Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Ansar Ali is urg­ing the pub­lic to avoid “gy­rat­ing” on fire ve­hi­cles in tran­sit, as he says this can cause un­nec­es­sary de­lays for pos­si­ble life-threat­en­ing emer­gen­cies.

Ali made the call dur­ing an in­ter-agency me­dia brief­ing at the VIP lounge of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah’s (QPS) Grand Stand yes­ter­day, where he said that while fire ve­hi­cles will like­ly take al­ter­nate routes away from the pa­rade cen­tres for Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day, there may be oc­ca­sions where they have no choice but to dri­ve along­side mas­quer­aders.

With this in mind, he im­plored rev­ellers to steer clear of emer­gency ve­hi­cles, warn­ing that while ‘win­ing’ on fire trucks or ten­ders may be seen as harm­less fun, it could have se­ri­ous con­se­quences, es­pe­cial­ly for peo­ple await­ing life-sav­ing sup­port.