Fire­fight­ers be­lieve the cause of the Sun­day night’s fire at the Scar­bor­ough Fire Sta­tion was linked to a faulty air-con­di­tion unit.

This is the pre­lim­i­nary find­ing of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al, Health and Safe­ty of­fi­cer.

The build­ing had sig­nif­i­cant and wa­ter dam­age as in­ves­ti­ga­tors toured the build­ing on Mon­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Fire Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Leo Ramkissoon, it was the sec­ond such fire in months, at the sta­tion.

“We sus­pect it’s a sim­i­lar fire and we have been clam­our­ing for work to be done on the elec­tri­cal sys­tem as there was an elec­tri­cal fire there some­time late last year,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

He said the build­ing, which hous­es more than 100 hun­dred of­fi­cers, is very old.

Re­fer­ring to the con­di­tion un­der which the of­fi­cers work, the As­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent said the struc­ture is made of wood and “there is ev­i­dence that woodlice (ter­mites) would have eat­en parts of it...there is a de­gree of dis­com­fort as of­fi­cers ex­ist in a cramped, old-dat­ed en­vi­ron­ment and the elec­tri­cal sys­tem is a prob­lem.”

A post on the sta­tion’s Face­book page in­di­cates that the Fire Ser­vices cel­e­brat­ed its 60th an­niver­sary at the sta­tion last year. The build­ing was com­mis­sioned on April 18, 1958.

Mean­while, Di­vi­sion­al Fire Of­fi­cer David Joseph- Thomas, told Guardian Me­dia that pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion showed the male dor­mi­to­ry was de­stroyed in the fire. The cost of the dam­age has been es­ti­mat­ed at $.5 mil­lion.

He said the blaze, which was ex­tin­guished in less than 30 min­utes, was dis­cov­ered by an off-du­ty fire of­fi­cer at 7 pm.

Joseph-Thomas said while of­fi­cers were try­ing to douse the fire at the sta­tion they re­ceived a call of a fire in Ma­son Hall.

“It turned out to be false, but we had sent most of our ap­pli­ances to that area to deal with that fire,” Joseph- Thomas said.

There have been 16 re­port­ed house fires in the Ma­son Hall/Mo­ri­ah area over the past four months.

On Sun­day, vil­lagers sprang in­to ac­tion when an­oth­er house caught fire. They caught and hand­ed over to po­lice, a sus­pect­ed ar­son­ist.

And in an un­re­lat­ed mat­ter, a van was seen burn­ing in front of the fire sta­tion on Fri­day, just be­fore 3 pm.

The Di­vi­sion­al Fire Of­fi­cer told Guardian Me­dia that the ve­hi­cle did not catch on fire in front of the sta­tion.

“It start­ed in Ba­co­let and the man made a valiant ef­fort to dri­ve it to the sta­tion. How­ev­er, all our ap­pli­ances were out fight­ing bush fires at the time,” Joseph-Thomas told Guardian Me­dia.

He said fire of­fi­cers used “in­no­v­a­tive ways” to oust the ve­hic­u­lar fire.