ST JOHN'S, An­tigua-Two of­fice blocks, an air­craft hangar and an air­craft were de­stroyed by a fire which swept through LI­AT's sec­tion of the VC Bird In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Sun­day night. Ac­cord­ing to a se­ries of ad­vi­sories is­sued by the com­pa­ny, the fire start­ed around 10.15 pm on Sun­day night and was not re­port­ed as be­ing un­der con­trol un­til 12 hours lat­er. There were no re­ports of in­jury or loss of life. Ac­cord­ing to Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC) re­ports, res­i­dents in the area heard sev­er­al ex­plo­sions short­ly be­fore 10.30 pm and saw smoke com­ing from the fa­cil­i­ty, at the air­port's east­ern edge.

Ex­plo­sions were said to have con­tin­ued to go off through­out the ef­fort by fire­fight­ers and ten­ders from the air­port and sta­tions around the is­land to bat­tle the blaze. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the de­stroyed plane was just over 21 years ol-the old­est of three Dash-8s still in LI­AT's flee-and was un­der­go­ing a rou­tine main­te­nance check. LI­AT said it was work­ing with the in­ves­tiga­tive au­thor­i­ties of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da as well as the East­ern Caribbean Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (EC­CAA) to de­ter­mine the cause of the fire. While flights were tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed at the height of the blaze, LI­AT re­port­ed that it was main­tain­ing its op­er­a­tions from the VC Bird In­ter­na­tion­al and oth­er re­gion­al air­ports and ex­pect­ed all flights to op­er­ate nor­mal­ly. LI­AT's man­age­ment al­so re­quest­ed all em­ploy­ees to re­port to the com­pa­ny's head­quar­ters for work as nor­mal.