The Trinidad and To­ba­go Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) con­firms a fire oc­curred at the Mal­oney Gar­dens Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment ear­ly this morn­ing. No one was hurt.

Ac­cord­ing to the HDC, the fire start­ed at 3:30 a.m. on the sec­ond floor of Build­ing Sev­en­teen (17). Ini­tial re­ports in­di­cate that the oc­cu­pant of the unit was boil­ing wa­ter when the gas tank caught fire. The res­i­dent fled the apart­ment and es­caped in­jury. Ten­ants alert­ed oth­ers to the fire and in­formed the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice (TTFS), which ar­rived on the scene and put out the fire.

HDC staff vis­it­ed the scene and are as­sess­ing the dam­age. Pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions show that the sew­er and wa­ter lines need to be re­placed. The HDC stat­ed that these works will be­gin to­day and are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by the end of the day. The units near the burnt apart­ment suf­fered smoke and wa­ter dam­age.

The HDC’s sub­sidiary, the Fa­cil­i­ties Es­tate Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (FEM­CoL), will re­me­di­ate the unit fol­low­ing the TTFS re­port, and the res­i­dent will be re­ferred to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices for coun­selling.

Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Camille Robin­son-Reg­is thanked the TTFS for its re­sponse in res­cu­ing the vic­tim and en­sur­ing their safe­ty. She al­so thanked them for putting out the fire and pre­vent­ing it from spread­ing to oth­er units. HDC’s Chair­man Noel Gar­cia and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Jay­selle Mc­Far­lane ex­pressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.

The HDC awaits fur­ther in­for­ma­tion fol­low­ing the TTFS’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion.