An­na-Lisa Paul

A bush fire, which be­gan just be­hind the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP) com­pound in Sea Lots yes­ter­day, was re­spon­si­ble for shut­ting down its op­er­a­tions for close to two hours, while hun­dreds of em­ploy­ees were evac­u­at­ed.The blaze was ob­served some­time be­tween 11.45 am and mid­day, when work­ers ob­served smoke com­ing from a par­cel of land south of the com­pound.

As alarms were trig­gered, work­ers from the plant, as well as the ad­min­is­tra­tive and cler­i­cal staff, rushed to emer­gency ex­its and head­ed to two muster points at the main en­trance and near the fly-over.Some work­ers opt­ed to cross the busy Beetham High­way and sought shel­ter un­der the fly-over.As em­ploy­ees heed­ed the warn­ing to evac­u­ate the com­pound, truck dri­vers al­so were or­dered to re­lo­cate their ve­hi­cles away from the site.

Tanker dri­vers ar­riv­ing at NP were forced to park on the shoul­der and await in­struc­tions from se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers.Mo­torists head­ing west con­firmed a plume of white smoke was seen com­ing from the back of NP, which led many to be­lieve a fire had bro­ken out on the com­pound.In a state­ment late yes­ter­day, NP's cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer Rae Gilbert con­firmed the fire had start­ed on land ad­ja­cent to the NP and Nat­pet fa­cil­i­ties and that emer­gency re­spons­es had been ac­ti­vat­ed.

She said a full evac­u­a­tion of the com­pound had been un­der­tak­en as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure but no dam­age had been done to ei­ther fa­cil­i­ty.Gilbert said yes­ter­day's oc­cur­rence had not dis­rupt­ed the sup­ply of fu­el to the ser­vice sta­tion net­work.