Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

An at­tempt by em­ploy­ees to re­move a bee­hive sparked a $13 mil­lion fire in Ch­aguara­mas yes­ter­day.

Fire of­fi­cials con­firmed that em­ploy­ees at the Caribbean Dock­yard (Cari­doc) com­pound on West­ern Main Road, Ch­aguara­mas, tried to re­move the bee­hive us­ing fire, which sparked the blaze.

The fire be­gan af­ter 8 am on Fri­day, with flames ris­ing just be­hind the perime­ter fence of the dock­yard.

Ac­cord­ing to fire of­fi­cials, fire ten­ders from the Ch­aguara­mas and Four Roads fire sta­tions were the first re­spon­ders, with sup­port from the Wright­son Road head­quar­ters.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Earl Samp­son said that while the fire was un­der con­trol, deal­ing with the ma­te­ri­als that were stored on the site made the op­er­a­tion chal­leng­ing.

We are deal­ing with ris­ers con­struct­ed from fi­bre­glass, used by oil com­pa­nies dur­ing drilling,” he ex­plained.

He said the in­su­la­tion ma­te­ri­als in­volved made the op­er­a­tion more com­plex.

Samp­son al­so said it was the first use of a new piece of equip­ment by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice.

“In our op­er­a­tion, a new piece of ap­pa­ra­tus has been added to our as­sets, known as the Hy­trans Sys­tem. It’s a high-vol­ume piece of ap­pa­ra­tus. Right now, we are pulling wa­ter from the sea, so we have no is­sues with wa­ter,” he said.

As the fire raged, part of the West­ern Main Road had to be cor­doned off. 

Samp­son not­ed, “We blocked off the road be­cause the wind di­rec­tion keeps chang­ing. We did this to pre­vent cars from pass­ing through as the smoke is ex­treme­ly harm­ful to the lungs and res­pi­ra­to­ry sys­tem. We have some breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus on-site, though not as many as we would have liked. The op­er­a­tion is in place, the com­mand sys­tem is in place, and we are op­er­at­ing up­wind of the sit­u­a­tion.”

The blaze took around four hours to ex­tin­guish.