A woman who called emergency services to report a blaze that destroyed a house claimed a fire truck took 45 minutes to arrive.Elizabeth Dore took issue with national security minister Wayne Caines’s claim that the vehicle reached the property in Union Street, Hamilton, within 12 minutes on December 7.She said a quicker response might have prevented the fire from destroying the home and all the belongings of the seven family members that lived there.But the Ministry of National Security insisted over the weekend that in fact the response had been earlier than Mr Caines first advised.Ms Dore told The Royal Gazette she called 911 at “exactly 9.30am” after discovering an electrical plug on fire in the kitchen when she visited the home of her sister, Bridget Hayward. She said: “The first fire truck arrived on the scene 45 minutes later.”Ms Dore, from Warwick, said that she dragged her nephew, Omar Hayward, the well-known para-sportsman, out of bed after she placed the call, and then made a further two calls to emergency services.Ms Dore said that a neighbour had also made multiple calls.“Everybody in the neighbourhood called because we did not see a fire truck coming,” she said.Ms Dore said “there was no smoke coming out, and there was no blaze up in the air” when she first placed the call.She added: “If they had come when I made the call, the house wouldn’t have burnt up.”A national security ministry spokesman said its records showed the call was made at 9.48am — 18 minutes later than Ms Dore said.He said: “The computer-aided dispatching system placed the original call at 9:48:28am and ending at 9:50:00am. The GPS records for the first on-scene vehicle places arrival at 9:58:15am. “This makes the total response time, from the initial call to on-scene arrival, at just under ten minutes.”Mr Caines said previously that an out-of-town reserve tender from Warwick had to tackle the blaze because the Hamilton Fire Station duty vehicle had mechanical problems.“He added that the standby vehicle had arrived at the scene “12 minutes after the initial call, followed shortly thereafter” by a second vehicle. Mr Caines said fire service personnel and equipment were already attending two previously reported fire-related events. He added: “Considering these facts, I have full confidence that the men and women of the BFRS were committed to attend the scene of this incident as swiftly and safely as possible.” Ms Dore said that one of the firefighters who attended had told her that the Hamilton fire engine was out of service. She added: “He said if there was a truck in Hamilton this could have been prevented.” The ministry spokesman said that the Bermuda Fire and Rescue Service “utilise a longstanding practice of continuous improvement and has in place contingency plans to ensure suppression equipment can arrive at locations across the island as swiftly and safely as possible”.He said that the nearest available unit on the day, from Port Royal Fire Station, was already repositioned at Warwick Post Office to provide a faster response to future calls.The spokesman said the truck at the post office was “immediately ordered to attend the scene” after the Hamilton duty vehicle malfunctioned.He added that the average response to calls is seven minutes. The spokesman said that it was not possible to conclude that an earlier arrival by firefighters would have led to reduced damage “due to the large number of inconsistent and unpredictable variables in residential fires”.He said these factors included the type of material involved, the supply of combustible materials in the area, and how long the fire had burnt before it was discovered.