Camille Clarke

The T&T Fire Ser­vice will be crack­ing down on fac­to­ry own­ers who are not com­ply­ing with the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al, Safe­ty and Health Act.The an­nounce­ment comes in the wake of an­oth­er in­dus­tri­al fire which de­stroyed Lil In­dus­tries, a fur­ni­ture fac­to­ry, yes­ter­day at River­side Av­enue, Mt Lam­bert. On Tues­day, fire de­stroyed the man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny Ther­mo­plas Ltd at Tis­sue Dri­ve, Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. In an in­ter­view at the scene of yes­ter­day's fire, act­ing as­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer for North­ern Di­vi­sion, De­lano George, said: "In some sit­u­a­tions, the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer is con­sid­er­ing the lev­el of safe­ty at the fac­to­ries. Just yes­ter­day (on Tues­day) there was an­oth­er fire at the Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

"There are own­ers that are not com­ply­ing with the OSH Act. The Chief Fire Of­fi­cer, along with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, will be crack­ing down on them." Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 27 em­ploy­ees yes­ter­day scam­pered for safe­ty as two loud ex­plo­sions rocked the Lil In­dus­tries fac­to­ry. These work­ers were placed on the bread­line as the fire com­plete­ly de­stroyed two struc­tures on the com­pound. The fire caused a traf­fic jam along the East­ern Main Road as fire ap­pli­ances raced to the scene. George said there were own­ers of com­pa­nies which were not trained in fire-fight­ing and evac­u­a­tion pro­ce­dures.

He added: "Work­ers from the floor above raised an alarm and every­one scat­tered. "The build­ing was well lit and the fire quick­ly spread to the ad­ja­cent build­ing where fur­ni­ture, thin­ners and lac­quers are stored. "The fire start­ed due to a mal­func­tion­ing mo­tor at­tached to a ma­chine that sparked around 12.15 pm," he said. George said there was an ad­e­quate amount of wa­ter as three wa­ter ten­ders from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty as­sist­ed. He said the col­laps­ing struc­ture and thin­ners stored on the premis­es pro­vid­ed prob­lems for fire­men.

Loss­es were not cal­cu­lat­ed yes­ter­day. George said that would be de­ter­mine to­day.

He said the own­er of the prop­er­ty, Al­lan Walk­er, was in­ter­viewed at the scene. Of­fi­cers of the San Juan, Wright­son Road and Tu­na­puna Fire Sta­tions re­spond­ed. Se­nior Supt Stephen Ram­sub­hag and Supt Di­nand Naipaul vis­it­ed the scene. Fire Pre­ven­tion of­fi­cers are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.