RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Wa­ter short­ages and re­in­forced steel doors ham­pered fire­fight­ers as they bat­tled an ear­ly-morn­ing blaze that gut­ted Anand Low Price Su­per­mar­ket in La Ro­maine, leav­ing about 100 em­ploy­ees from the su­per­mar­ket and neigh­bour­ing Bent­ley’s tem­porar­i­ly job­less.

The fire, which broke out around 3:43 am at the Gulf City lo­ca­tion, drew a co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice, with ap­pli­ances dis­patched from Mon Re­pos head­quar­ters, Pe­nal and Ch­agua­nas. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, act­ing Deputy Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Ansar Ali said fire­fight­ers faced sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges on ar­rival, as low wa­ter pres­sure in the area and lim­it­ed ac­cess to the build­ing slowed con­tain­ment ef­forts.

“The wa­ter sup­ply in the area was a bit low, and we were even­tu­al­ly sup­port­ed by WASA tankers,” he said.

Flames were first ob­served at the front of the build­ing, clos­er to the high­way. Ac­cord­ing to Ali, the fire com­plete­ly gut­ted the up­per lev­el hous­ing the gro­cery sec­tion of Anand Low Price Su­per­mar­ket. While the ex­ter­nal walls re­main stand­ing, the in­te­ri­or was de­stroyed.

“The en­tire in­side has been gut­ted,” Ali said. “The doors to the build­ing gave us some chal­lenges. They were steel doors locked from the in­side, which made ac­cess dif­fi­cult, along with the risk of col­laps­ing walls.”

Em­ploy­ees looked on in tears as the fire con­sumed the su­per­mar­ket. Bent­ley’s, lo­cat­ed be­low, was saved from de­struc­tion but sus­tained wa­ter dam­age dur­ing fire­fight­ing op­er­a­tions. Ali said the ho­tel sec­tion down­stairs suf­fered on­ly min­i­mal dam­age.

No in­juries or fa­tal­i­ties were re­port­ed and Ali said there were no re­ports of any­one trapped in­side the build­ing. Fire­fight­ers man­aged to con­fine the blaze to the su­per­mar­ket, pre­vent­ing it from spread­ing to near­by struc­tures. Damp­en­ing op­er­a­tions were still on­go­ing hours lat­er, as crews worked to cool hot spots with­in the rub­ble.

Ali said he es­ti­mat­ed the loss as a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar fire but said a pre­cise fig­ure would on­ly be de­ter­mined af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with man­age­ment and in­sur­ers. In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the cause of the blaze have been de­layed due to un­safe con­di­tions in­side the build­ing.

“We can’t en­ter to con­duct in­ves­ti­ga­tions at this time be­cause it’s still too hot,” he said.

As the coun­try en­ters the dry sea­son, Ali urged busi­ness own­ers to take fire safe­ty se­ri­ous­ly. “Vis­it the Fire Ser­vice, have your place in­spect­ed, prac­tise prop­er house­keep­ing and stor­age, and en­sure your elec­tri­cal wiring is safe and se­cure,” he ad­vised.