Shas­tri Boodan

An es­ti­mat­ed $15 mil­lion was lost when fire gut­ted a ware­house owned by Ch­agua­nas busi­ness­man Oma­dath Roop­nar­ine last night. Roop­nar­ine said the build­ing at Mar­ket Street, Ch­agua­nas housed hab­er­dash­ery items for his Buy­er's Mart stores. Roop­nar­ine said he would try to find em­ploy­ment for the 15 peo­ple em­ployed at the gut­ted struc­ture at his oth­er op­er­a­tions. Ch­agua­nas may­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar and Ju­nior Works Min­is­ter Rudy In­dars­ingh, who were at a func­tion in the area when they heard the news, were on hand last night to com­mis­ser­ate with the busi­ness­man.

In­dars­ingh said he con­tact­ed a se­nior of­fi­cial at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty to boost the wa­ter pres­sure when fire­men com­plained about low pres­sure. Nages­sar said he was wor­ried about the fate of the dis­placed work­ers, loot­ing and the fate of the near­by FCB Bank. The may­or said he was sat­is­fied that the po­lice and fire­men had the sit­u­a­tion un­der con­trol. Nages­sar al­so praised fire­men for res­cu­ing a dog trapped in a ken­nel in the build­ing.