SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

An ear­ly morn­ing fire at KFC’s Char­lotte Street, Port-of-Spain branch has caused an es­ti­mat­ed $1.5 mil­lion in dam­age to the restau­rant.

Con­tact­ed hours af­ter the fire, Pres­tige Hold­ing CEO Si­mon Hardy said he was dis­heart­ened by the in­ci­dent, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en that the branch was one of sev­er­al sched­uled to be re­opened to­day af­ter a long shut­down due to the COVID-19 mea­sures.

“On the eve be­fore we are al­lowed to re­open af­ter two and a half months of clo­sure, to have some­thing like this, which means that the store will not be able to re­open—it’s huge­ly dis­ap­point­ing. How­ev­er, we are ex­treme­ly grate­ful that no one was hurt. At the end of the day, stores can be re­built but peo­ple’s lives are much more pre­cious.”

Hardy said in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing and the cause of the fire is still un­known. How­ev­er, he said all staff at­tached to the branch will be re­de­ployed to oth­er near­by branch­es.

Mean­while, Port-of-Spain may­or Joel Mar­tinez said he was told the es­ti­mat­ed dam­age by act­ing Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Mar­lon Smith.

“I spoke this morn­ing (yes­ter­day) with the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer and the chair­man of the group which owns KFC and what I got from the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer was that just af­ter 1 o’clock or some­where be­tween 1 - 1.30 am, po­lice of­fi­cers were scan­ning the area and they were along Char­lotte Street and they ob­served smoke com­ing from the roof of the KFC build­ing,” Mar­tinez said.

He said the of­fi­cers con­tact­ed the T&T Fire Ser­vice and fire of­fi­cers ar­rived around 2 am to try to ex­tin­guish the blaze.

How­ev­er, Mar­tinez said he was told they had dif­fi­cul­ty get­ting to the source of the fire.

“They gained ac­cess to the store and of­fi­cers in­di­cat­ed that it took them a lit­tle while to get to the source of the fire be­cause there was a lot of smoke in the area and it was be­cause the fire was ac­tu­al­ly em­bed­ded in the roof of the build­ing—it was a dif­fi­cul­ty in bring­ing it un­der con­trol but they would have dealt with it,” Mar­tinez said.

He said he al­so con­tact­ed Pres­tige Hold­ings’ chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Chris­t­ian Mout­tet, about the fire. He said Mout­tet told him the in­ci­dent would be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the com­pa­ny.

Mar­tinez de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as a blow to the city, es­pe­cial­ly with food ser­vices ex­pect­ed to be re­opened to­day (Mon­day). 

“It is re­al­ly a dif­fi­cult propo­si­tion with food now open­ing back and we are now en­cour­ag­ing the busi­ness­es to be in a state of readi­ness to be able to serve the con­sum­ing pub­lic.

“It’s a blow, first of all, to Port-of-Spain and it’s a blow for the fran­chise busi­ness and al­so for the con­sumers who would nor­mal­ly pur­chase their stuff at that KFC on Char­lotte Street,” he said.

Mar­tinez said he did not know whether there were any is­sues with wa­ter to fight the fire, but said he will en­sure that when­ev­er any sim­i­lar in­ci­dents hap­pen, they will be brought un­der con­trol quick­ly.

“Pre­ven­tion is al­ways bet­ter than cure—so it’s some­thing that we want to make sure that we have the right type of equip­ment and things like that be­cause any fire is a loss and it’s al­so a dis­rup­tion for the city it­self,” he said.