Loyse Vin­cent

To­ba­go suf­fered over $1 mil­lion worth in dam­age as fire razed three sep­a­rate build­ings on Wednes­day night.

Each of the fires oc­curred with­in min­utes of the oth­er, while two were mere me­tres apart.

Fire of­fi­cials said in­ves­ti­ga­tions were on­go­ing and that pre­lim­i­nary find­ings in­di­cat­ed a pos­si­ble link be­tween two of the in­ci­dents.

The first fire oc­curred short­ly af­ter 6 pm at Cour­land Bush Trace at Black Rock where a sin­gle-sto­ry dwelling house owned by Ter­ry and Cur­tis George caught afire.

An es­ti­mate of the dam­age to the house was said to be around $500,000. Di­vi­sion­al Fire Of­fi­cer for To­ba­go, David Thomas said the fire orig­i­nat­ed in one of the bed­rooms of the house. He said of­fi­cers were bare­ly able to wrap up the first scene be­fore be­ing called up­on to put out two oth­er fires.

“At about 8 pm while they were clos­ing down op­er­a­tions at the Black Rock fire, we got the call alert­ing us to the Botan­ic Gar­dens fire and while on route to the Botan­ic Fire we got the Sang­ster’s Hill fire,” he said.

In the sec­ond in­ci­dent, a wood­en struc­ture at the cen­tre of the Botan­i­cal Gar­den known as the “Gaze­bo” which was pre­vi­ous­ly used to host func­tions in­clud­ing wed­dings and Christ­mas par­ties was to­tal­ly en­gulfed. Ac­cord­ing to Thomas, the val­ue of the build­ing was es­ti­mat­ed to be in the vicin­i­ty of $300,000.

The third blaze oc­curred on­ly me­tres away, at an­oth­er To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) build­ing used for stor­age at Sang­ster’s Hill which was al­so com­plete­ly de­stroyed.

When asked if he found the oc­cur­rence un­usu­al, Thomas said pre­lim­i­nary re­ports in­di­cat­ed that there may be some link to the fire at the Botan­i­cal Gar­den and the fire at Sang­ster’s Hill.

“I am think­ing that both fires in Scar­bor­ough might have been close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed and that is against the back­ground that we have pre­vi­ous­ly re­spond­ed to fires on oth­er oc­ca­sions at both lo­ca­tions so it might have been as a re­sult of some­body in­trud­ing il­le­gal­ly in the premis­es or it might have been some­body who has ul­te­ri­or mo­tives.”

He said of­fi­cers were at all three lo­ca­tions to­day car­ry­ing out in­ves­ti­ga­tions and once com­plete the find­ings will be pre­sent­ed.

Just a few weeks ago in April, Thomas had re­marked on the “sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in ve­hic­u­lar and struc­tur­al fires on the is­land since No­vem­ber last year.”

The Di­vi­sion­al Fire Of­fi­cer called on res­i­dents to “do bet­ter” as a num­ber of fires were caused by faulty equip­ment, care­less­ness or may have been set by in­trud­ers. At that time of­fi­cials record­ed more than twelve fires on the is­land for the pe­ri­od.