RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Fire­fight­ers bat­tled a rag­ing in­fer­no in­side the eTecK Park in Point Lisas last night, af­ter a chem­i­cal fac­to­ry went up in flames.

For sev­er­al hours, dozens of fire­fight­ers from South­ern Di­vi­sion­al Head­quar­ters, Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, Tu­na­puna, Wright­son Road, Princes Town and Siparia fire­fight­ers risked their lives to con­tain the blaze and pre­vent it from spread­ing to oth­er es­tab­lish­ments near Pa­cif­ic Av­enue, Point Lisas.

The Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate com­pris­es 103 com­pa­nies in­volved in the pro­duc­tion of petro­chem­i­cals such as methanol, am­mo­nia and urea.

For over three hours, the fire­fight­ers al­so bat­tled to stop the blaze from spread­ing to nine con­tain­ers filled with flam­ma­ble chem­i­cals on the east­ern and south­ern sides of the eTecK Park. Ini­tial­ly, the fire was be­lieved to be a Mas­ter­mix ware­house but lat­er was said to be a build­ing ad­ja­cent to Mas­ter­mix called Gem­i­ni Inks, a print­ing sup­plies com­pa­ny.

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia reached out to an of­fi­cial of the com­pa­ny, she said it was un­cer­tain where the blaze be­gan.

“Right now I have noth­ing left in me to speak. Call the Fire Ser­vice,” she said.

A ten­ant at the park told Guardian Me­dia that the own­ers left the of­fice around 5 pm and about an hour lat­er, they were alert­ed via a What­sApp mes­sage that the build­ing was ablaze.

“One of the oth­er ten­ants in the What­sApp group chat told them there was smoke on the west­ern side and that is from where it start­ed. We were on our way home. We are wor­ried be­cause there is an­oth­er con­tain­er stored with chem­i­cal sol­vents fur­ther back,” a ten­ant said.

An­oth­er ten­ant then re­vealed that nine more con­tain­ers with chem­i­cal sol­vents were in the park.

“There are oth­ers at the east. All the ware­hous­es as well. If those con­tain­ers blow then that is it for all of us,” the ten­ant said.

While fire­fight­ers tried to smoth­er the fire, they were helped by the wind which blew south.

“The wind is help­ing them. If those con­tain­ers blow, then it will take all those build­ings away. There is al­so an­oth­er chem­i­cal fac­to­ry to the south. It is about 30 feet away from the fire and if that blow it is the end,” the man added.

Chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers, Jai Lelad­hars­ingh, said last night that his as­so­ci­a­tion was very con­cerned about the fire.

“Right now, the fire is near in­dus­tries that use nat­ur­al gas, which is a very flam­ma­ble sub­stance. It is very wor­ri­some and we want to praise the fire­fight­ers who are putting them­selves out there to com­bat this fire,” Lelad­hars­ingh said.

He not­ed that the au­thor­i­ties must en­sure a spe­cialised fire sta­tion is set up at Point Lisas to deal with fires.

“We have been call­ing for this spe­cialised fire sta­tion to be con­struct­ed close to these in­dus­tries so that there could be the first re­sponse to such dis­as­ters and that fires could be ex­tin­guished and con­tained in the short­est pos­si­ble time.”

Sev­er­al peo­ple took to so­cial me­dia to re­port on the fire.

Kester D`Ar­naud wrote, “So Gem­i­ni Inks is on fire. Huge fire and lots of ex­plo­sions in the dis­tance so if I die be­cause the in­dus­tri­al es­tate ex­plodes, re­mem­ber Metal­li­ca is over­rat­ed.”