Joshua Seemu­n­gal

The Plaza 2001 Shop­ping Mall on the Ch­agua­nas Main Road has been dam­aged by fire. While there was ex­ten­sive prop­er­ty dam­age to the build­ing, there were no re­ports of in­juries or fa­tal­i­ties.

Fire of­fi­cers were present on the scene un­til af­ter mid­day yes­ter­day, caus­ing parts of the main road to be blocked off, re­sult­ing in ad­di­tion­al traf­fic in the area.

Ac­cord­ing to As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Lalchan Ar­joon, who was at the scene, fire of­fi­cers re­ceived a call at around 9 am.

“Our crew from Ch­agua­nas was dis­patched, and on ar­rival, we no­ticed a fire on the first floor of the build­ing. We would have com­menced fire­fight­ing op­er­a­tions. How­ev­er, we need­ed ad­di­tion­al re­sources, so we mo­bilised ad­di­tion­al re­sources from our cen­tral di­vi­sion and north­ern di­vi­sion,” Ar­joon said.

“The fire was ad­e­quate­ly con­trolled. It was con­fined to the build­ing. We didn’t get any fire spread to ad­di­tion­al build­ings. At the mo­ment, we are in the process of gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion and our fire in­ves­ti­ga­tion team is here. They have com­menced an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

Dawn Sal­ick, who lives next door to the mall, was awok­en by a loud ex­plo­sion yes­ter­day morn­ing. When she ran out­side to check out what it was, she saw smoke and a rag­ing fire.

“The flames were com­ing through, so I just ran back in­side and told every­one to get out the house and by the time we came out the whole mall was en­gulfed in flames…We did suf­fer dam­age to our prop­er­ty, but very lit­tle,” she said.

“The re­sponse from the fire ser­vice was good, can’t com­plain. They reach quick­ly, you know, and the fire ser­vice was here from three places, so I thought that was good.”

Al­so present at the scene, Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­to, com­mend­ed his of­fi­cers for a job well done.

He said that of­fi­cers ex­pe­ri­enced chal­lenges that re­quired ad­di­tion­al re­sources.

“We would have pro­vid­ed from the south­ern di­vi­sion breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus from Pi­ar­co, as well as an­oth­er tanker from the north­ern di­vi­sion, so that they could have ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­ply, be­cause the wa­ter sup­ply in Ch­agua­nas, at this time, is low. I would have al­so con­tact­ed the CEO of WASA who would have in­ter­vened with sup­ply­ing ad­di­tion­al trucks,” Bris­to said.