Safety regulations for trucks being utilized during festivals are under intense scrutiny following two separate incidents during last Monday’s Labor Day celebrations that left one woman dead and another seriously injured.
Public health officials, engineers, and civic leaders are calling for stricter enforcement of safety protocols at all public festivities and not just during Carnival.
“We shouldn’t have people getting on and getting off the trucks like that,” said Lionel Michael, a Public Health and Environmental Health Specialist. “If somebody wanted to get off the truck, for whatever reason, there should be a procedure. The trucks should come to a halt, come to a stop.”
Michael emphasized that regardless of whether laws are formally in place, organizers have a moral obligation to ensure safety.
The incidents have raised questions about why safety measures that have been employed during Carnival are not consistently applied to other public celebrations.
Franklyn Southwell, a Project Manager within the Ministry of Agriculture who has experience in mechanical, industrial, and aviation engineering, explained the particular dangers of the vehicles involved.
“These vehicles are on the designation of articulated vehicles, meaning that the part of the back, where we call the trailer, is not physically attached to the engine from the rig up front. So there’s a hinge,” Southwell said. He noted that after a similar tragedy during Carnival some years ago, regulations were enacted requiring wheel coverings and mandating marshals to accompany the vehicles.
“The marshals that we saw in Carnival, I didn’t see them during the Labor Day celebrations,” Southwell observed. “The marshals are extremely important. They’re mandatory, they must be there.”
Stafford Lewis, a General Contractor and Civic Leader with the Antigua & Barbuda Diaspora Progressives, called for stricter enforcement and penalties for non-compliance with safety regulations.
“I would be a little bit more draconian in saying that there should be penalties levied against persons who would have broken the rules and regulations,” Lewis said. “I don’t see how you can have rules without penalties.”
Lewis suggested that insurance companies will likely scrutinize these incidents closely.
“Insurance companies are not just gonna pay out money just like that. They’re gonna have strict guidelines under which they’re gonna issue policies,” he explained.
Critics have questioned why the festivities continued after the first incident that resulted in injury, with some suggesting this reflected poor priorities on the part of organizers.
Michael indicated that while Carnival has well-established protocols for when to stop music or halt proceedings if safety is compromised, other celebrations might not have the same level of regulation or enforcement.
“I presume that it would be the same level of protection that is required,” Michael said, referring to celebrations outside of Carnival. “The festival commission or the police would ensure that the vehicles meet these requirements and that the organizers and drivers of these trucks adhere to the regulations.”
All three experts agreed that safety measures must be consistent across all public celebrations involving large vehicles. They emphasized the need for properly trained marshals, covered wheels on trucks, and clear procedures for boarding and disembarking.
“It’s really sad that this is the way that we get corrective measures,” Lewis remarked, “but sometimes it takes these kinds of incidents to take place for us to come to a degree of understanding as to what our collective responsibilities are.”
Meanwhile, Ambassador Lionel Hurst, Chief of Staff in the Office of the Prime Minister, confirmed that wheel guards are required by law.
“This is a mandatory regulation at the moment. And the failure to have the truck’s wheels guarded by some barriers of some sort is, in fact, a violation., But we don’t know yet exactly how the police will respond to it, because we’re not traffic enforcers.”
Investigations into Monday’s incidents are ongoing,
