PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Em­ploy­ees of An­gos­tu­ra saved the pub­licly list­ed com­pa­ny mil­lions of dol­lars through their proac­tive ac­tion in bat­tling a fire at the com­pa­ny's Laven­tille fa­cil­i­ty last Fri­day.

And they al­so saved the Christ­mas and Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions of many peo­ple, ac­cord­ing to An­gos­tu­ra chair­man, Ter­rence Bharath, at the open­ing of a new out­let of An­gos­tu­ra's re­tail­er, Sol­era, at Al­bion Plaza, Vic­to­ria Av­enue on Mon­day evening.

Bharath re­vealed that while the fire had start­ed in the botan­i­cal area where An­gos­tu­ra Bit­ters is pro­duced, he was faced with the choice of dis­card­ing a sig­nif­i­cant amount of wine in a tanker to pre­vent the fire from ig­nit­ing fur­ther and com­plete­ly de­stroy­ing the House of An­gos­tu­ra build­ing.

"I made a de­ci­sion then. Emp­ty all the al­co­hol and be­lieve it or not, this is a true sto­ry. As I said that, I saw a gen­tle­man next to me and he was says 'Sir, do not emp­ty the al­co­hol. So I said to him, I said I have the lives of peo­ple in my hands. I can't do that. He said Sir, I have been work­ing in­side of the Bit­ters for over 15 years. I promise you do not emp­ty the al­co­hol, we could sell it. Those were his words," said Bharath, who added the man con­vinced him to hold off on dis­card­ing the liquor.

"He says give me two min­utes. Let me go back in­side of there and see. He ran back in and this man had an S on his chest. He was wear­ing a Su­per­man jer­sey and at one stage I was so deliri­ous, and I said 'Is this di­vine in­ter­ven­tion,' I didn't know. He came back out and he said I promise you do not emp­ty that al­co­hol," said Bharath, the work­er then had a dis­cus­sion with fire of­fi­cers and they man­aged to save the al­co­hol and even­tu­al­ly the fire was con­tained.

Bharath was al­so heart­ened by the re­sponse from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and the wider pub­lic, not­ing that ANSA Chem­i­cals gave the com­pa­ny ac­cess to foam to con­tain the fire, while fol­low­ing T&TEC's pre­ven­ta­tive dis­con­nec­tion of the elec­tric­i­ty to the build­ing, a se­ries of ve­hi­cles gath­ered to pro­vide lights to those work­ing to save the build­ing and the stock.

"I can't dis­close to you how much al­co­hol there was in the busi­ness area. But put it this way, had that ig­nit­ed there would have been no way we could have brought that fire un­der con­trol. The spir­it that I ex­pe­ri­enced that night, I have nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore and it gave me the con­fi­dence in hu­man­i­ty once more. We all face ad­ver­si­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go on a dai­ly ba­sis and through­out the world. But what I saw hap­pen there where every­body came to­geth­er, there was no class, there was no creed, there was no re­li­gion. There was no rank on any­body. Every­body band­ed to­geth­er to save us," said Bharath.

How­ev­er Bharath not­ed that the most pop­u­lar ques­tion af­ter the fire was con­tained was not what was the dam­age or po­ten­tial loss­es.

"The ques­tion was boss, we get­ting rum for Car­ni­val and Christ­mas? That was the most im­por­tant ques­tion to an­swer," said Bharath,"We get­ting rum for Car­ni­val and Christ­mas. So fear not. And we have saved An­gos­tu­ra from de­struc­tion."

Bharath al­so re­vealed that An­gos­tu­ra's Amaro di An­gos­tu­ra and An­gos­tu­ra Age 5 Years had been se­lect­ed to be served on Roy­al Caribbean's Icon of the Seas ves­sel from Jan­u­ary.

Sol­era opened the branch at Al­bion Plaza af­ter the com­pa­ny was in­formed that its pre­vi­ous lo­ca­tion at Gray Street which is 100 years old, was no longer fit to be used as a com­mer­cial space.

An­gos­tu­ra rep­re­sen­ta­tives said the cause of the fire was still to be de­ter­mined, as was the es­ti­mat­ed cost of the dam­age.

The rep­re­sen­ta­tives ex­plained that as a re­sult, in­sur­ance claims were still be­ing processed.