A fire broke out on Fri­day at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Cen­tre, Tow­er C, on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain dur­ing sched­uled main­te­nance works, prompt­ing a swift re­sponse from emer­gency per­son­nel and the ac­ti­va­tion of safe­ty pro­to­cols.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred around 3 pm when a heat­ing el­e­ment used in the re­place­ment of the roof­ing mem­brane ig­nit­ed.

The blaze was quick­ly ex­tin­guished with­in min­utes by on-site work­ers be­fore the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice (TTFS) was called in for as­sess­ment.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, TTFS Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Daron Dasent stat­ed, “The alarm was ac­ti­vat­ed, and they ex­tin­guished the fire be­fore call­ing the Fire Ser­vice."

In a state­ment, Ude­cott said there was no im­me­di­ate threat to life or safe­ty and the build­ing was evac­u­at­ed as a pre­cau­tion due to smoke en­ter­ing the fresh air in­take sys­tem. 

It said the evac­u­a­tion was car­ried out smooth­ly in ac­cor­dance with the build­ing’s Health, Safe­ty, Se­cu­ri­ty, and En­vi­ron­ment (HSSE) pro­to­cols.

Of­fi­cials have con­firmed that the sit­u­a­tion was quick­ly brought un­der con­trol, and the build­ing was be­ing close­ly mon­i­tored.