Derek Achong

A ware­house and of­fice build­ing used by beer man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny, Carib Brew­ery, was com­plete­ly de­stroyed by a rag­ing bush fire in Mt Lam­bert yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the fire start­ed around mid­day at a strip of bush­es which sep­a­rates the pave­ment from busi­ness­es and homes on the north side of the East­ern Main Road.

The fire quick­ly spread to stacks of wood­en pal­lets and plas­tic bot­tle cas­es be­ing stored on the build­ing's com­pound and then to the build­ing it­self. No one was in­jured as staff in the build­ing no­ticed the smoke and were able to evac­u­ate to an emp­ty lot lo­cat­ed next door.

By the time fire of­fi­cers and ten­ders from Mor­vant, San Juan, Tu­na­puna and Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, ar­rived on the scene, the en­tire build­ing was al­ready en­gulfed in flames.

Some of the of­fi­cers were seen re­mov­ing un­burnt pal­lets and cas­es sur­round­ing the build­ing while their col­leagues bat­tled to ex­tin­guish the blaze which threat­ened to spread to the ad­ja­cent Mt Lam­bert Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre and oth­er sur­round­ing busi­ness­es.

It took fire of­fi­cers al­most two hours to ex­tin­guish most of the fire us­ing wa­ter and foam, but by then the roof of the build­ing had al­ready col­lapsed and its con­tents com­plete­ly de­stroyed.

In a brief in­ter­view, As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Siew­nar­ine Ram­saran con­firmed that the in­ci­dent was caused by a bush fire which was pos­si­bly ig­nit­ed by a dis­card­ed cig­a­rette butt.

Ram­saran said that the dam­age could have been mit­i­gat­ed if in­flam­ma­ble ma­te­r­i­al which fu­elled the fire had been stored away from the bush­es.

"We ad­vise every­one to prac­tise good house­keep­ing. In an area like this we would ad­vise to place a fire trap next to your prop­er­ty so it will not come in­to your build­ing. Even though it is not your land next door you keep it clean so it will not af­fect your prop­er­ty in the case of a fire," Ram­saran said.

When asked how the Fire Ser­vice was cop­ing with nu­mer­ous bush fires dur­ing the dry sea­son, Ram­saran said most could be avoid­ed if peo­ple fol­lowed the law.

"Dur­ing the bush fire sea­son you can not light any fires out­doors un­less it is for cook­ing or if you have a fire per­mit. The law is spe­cif­ic and peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed for that," Ram­saran said as he not­ed that the ser­vice will con­tin­ue to be vig­i­lant in its pub­lic aware­ness cam­paigns dur­ing the sea­son.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Carib Brew­ery man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Gabriel Faria said that the build­ing was not owned by the com­pa­ny but in­stead was a rent­ed prop­er­ty used to store raw ma­te­ri­als.

He said that on­ly a hand­ful of staff worked there and they es­caped with­out in­jury. When asked to es­ti­mate the ex­tent of the dam­age, Faria said that it could not be done up to late yes­ter­day as com­pa­ny of­fi­cials had not had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to vis­it the site since fire of­fi­cers were still on the scene.

Three peo­ple have been killed by bush fires this year. On Good Fri­day, se­nior forestry of­fi­cer, Kei­th Camp­bell, 54, died af­ter be­ing se­vere­ly burnt in a bush fire off La­dy Chan­cel­lor Road, St Ann's. Three of his col­leagues who were as­sist­ing in ex­tin­guish­ing the bush fire were al­so burnt but sur­vived.

Last Wednes­day, nine-year-old Hezeki­ah Hospedales was burnt to death when a bush fire spread to his San Juan home. His moth­er Shalis­er Theodore-Hospedales was se­vere­ly burnt as she at­tempt­ed to save her son and one-year-old daugh­ter Rekeia Bruce. Their neigh­bours Phillip and Je­re­mi­ah Jones in­ter­vened and man­aged to res­cue an in­jured Theodore-Hospedales and Bruce, who was un­scathed. Theodore-Hospedales suc­cumbed to her in­juries at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal three days lat­er.