An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Fire of­fi­cers yes­ter­day re­turned to the scene of a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar fire at the Amer­i­jet bond­ed ware­house at the Pi­ar­co South Ter­mi­nal, af­ter smoke was seen com­ing from the up­per floor, in­di­cat­ing it had reignit­ed.

Al­though checks around 11 am re­vealed the com­pound was emp­ty, a fire ten­der along with an am­bu­lance ar­rived at the fa­cil­i­ty just af­ter noon.

An em­ploy­ee at a near­by fa­cil­i­ty ob­served smoke com­ing from two places on the up­per floor and alert­ed fire of­fi­cials.

The blaze on Fri­day led to the tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of all flight op­er­a­tions at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port and re­sult­ed in ar­riv­ing flights be­ing di­vert­ed to the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, To­ba­go. Over 20 flights were af­fect­ed.

Amer­i­jet’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Si­mon Pan­tin yes­ter­day con­firmed, “It keeps flar­ing up, but the fire ser­vices know what they are do­ing.”

Re­veal­ing the un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent sparked a sense of com­pas­sion among their im­me­di­ate neigh­bours at the old South Ter­mi­nal, he said, “I am hap­py to say we have cer­tain­ly seen the best in peo­ple. Since the event hap­pened, Swis­s­port has been ex­treme­ly kind and of­fered that they can fa­cil­i­tate us.”

He said some of Amer­i­jet’s goods, which in­clud­ed med­ica­tions, vac­cines and oth­er cold-chain ship­ments, had been im­me­di­ate­ly re­lo­cat­ed to the Swis­s­port Cold Stor­age Fa­cil­i­ty com­pound next door. Sched­uled to meet with Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cials to­mor­row, Pan­tin said they had been very ac­com­mo­dat­ing.

“They are go­ing to put some process­es in place that should help us to get back op­er­a­tional as quick­ly as pos­si­ble,” Pan­tin said.

In­di­cat­ing they had not been able to ac­cess the fa­cil­i­ty since Fri­day to con­duct an in­ven­to­ry, Pan­tin was un­able to say what loss­es looked like at this time.

For peo­ple ex­pect­ing pack­ages, he ad­vised them to check Amer­i­jet’s web­site for fur­ther up­dates.

They are hop­ing to get the all-clear for re-en­try by to­mor­row.