Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

When bur­glars at a ware­house in Siparia failed to steal hun­dreds of thou­sands dol­lars in goods ear­ly Sun­day, they then set the build­ing on fire, caus­ing more than $2M in dam­age.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, fire­fight­ers from the Siparia Fire Sta­tion re­spond­ed to re­ports of a fire at the ware­house of Har­ry's Glob­al Im­ports on Quinam Road, Siparia around 6.10 am yes­ter­day.

When the of­fi­cers ar­rived the build­ing was al­ready on fire.

Ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials, there was ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1m worth of tele­vi­sions, re­frig­er­a­tors, small ap­pli­ances and fur­ni­ture in the build­ing, which was it­self val­ued at $1M, at the time.

A fork­lift, a Nis­san Blue­bird Syl­phy and two three-tonne trucks which were al­so in the build­ing at the time were al­so de­stroyed.

Pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that a hole had been cut in steel mesh be­tween the walls and roof of the build­ing.

Be­fore the fire, the thieves loaded the two trucks and the car with stolen goods and then tried to break down the dou­ble steel gates at the build­ing's en­trance us­ing the fork­lift.

The gates did not fall, but were slight­ly bent at the point of im­pact.

When in­ves­ti­ga­tors ven­tured to the side of the build­ing, there were sev­er­al emp­ty tele­vi­sion box­es in the grass, lead­ing them to be­lieve the thieves re­sort­ed to tak­ing items through the gap they had en­tered af­ter they failed to break down the gates.

The build­ing was then set on fire.

Noth­ing was re­cov­ered from the build­ing and fire of­fi­cers present said they would have to wait un­til the ash­es cooled be­fore ven­tur­ing in­side to con­duct their full in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Bil­ly Har­ry, own­er of the ware­house was at the scene but de­clined to give any de­tails about the blaze.

Har­ry said he would wait un­til fire of­fi­cers had fin­ished their in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­fore mak­ing any state­ments.

He did re­veal that the build­ing was in­sured but lament­ed that he might not be able to re­cov­er the full val­ue of his loss­es.