Four ve­hi­cles were de­stroyed in a fire at the car park to the south of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine cam­pus yes­ter­day.

The TT Fire Ser­vice said the fire was ac­ci­den­tal. They pin­point­ed an “on­go­ing me­chan­i­cal re­pair to the fu­el pump of a Nis­san B 13” as the cause. In a re­lease, the TTFS said the fire start­ed in the fu­el pump area in the back seat of the ve­hi­cle. They al­so dis­cov­ered the bat­tery was not dis­con­nect­ed dur­ing the re­pair work.

The fire spread to three oth­er ve­hi­cles, in­clud­ing a Kia Soul, a Hyundai Ion­iq and a Mit­subishi Lancer. Ap­pli­ances from the Tu­na­puna Fire Sta­tion re­spond­ed un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Fire Sta­tion Of­fi­cer (Ag) Ian Woods.

In a state­ment, the UWI said at 11.24 am cam­pus au­thor­i­ties were alert­ed to a fire in­volv­ing four ve­hi­cles at the JFK Staff Carpark, sit­u­at­ed on the south­ern side of the cam­pus.

Of­fi­cials con­firmed pre­vi­ous re­ports that no one was in­jured.

"In an im­me­di­ate and co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse, the UWI Es­tate Po­lice, the Cam­pus In­ci­dent Man­age­ment Team and the Emer­gency Vol­un­teer team, rapid­ly sprang in­to ac­tion call­ing on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vices who quick­ly ar­rived to con­tain the fire," the UWI said.

" Uni­ver­si­ty per­son­nel will con­tin­ue to sup­port the au­thor­i­ties and a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the cause of the fire is un­der­way. Ve­hi­cle own­ers im­pact­ed by this in­ci­dent have been con­tact­ed di­rect­ly by our Emer­gency Re­sponse Team to ad­dress any con­cerns and pro­vide sup­port. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, coun­selling ser­vices will be made avail­able."

The UWI said pri­or­i­ty now shifts to­wards the as­sess­ment, clean­ing, and nec­es­sary re­pairs re­quired to re­store the car park to full func­tion­al­i­ty, en­sur­ing its avail­abil­i­ty to the cam­pus com­mu­ni­ty.