CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Lead Ed­i­tor- News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

An­gos­tu­ra Lim­it­ed has been left as­sess­ing prop­er­ty dam­age and loss­es af­ter a fire broke out at its East­ern Main Road, Laven­tille com­pound yes­ter­day.

Of­fi­cials said the blaze be­gan in what they called the (An­gos­tu­ra) Bit­ters Blend­ing sec­tion of the com­pound just af­ter 6 pm.

When Guardian Me­dia ar­rived at the lo­ca­tion, the streets were cor­doned off with emer­gency ve­hi­cles, prompt­ing traf­fic to be di­vert­ed to oth­er routes.

Dozens of fire of­fi­cers bat­tled to con­trol the fire.

A T&TEC crew was al­so on hand to en­sure that elec­tric­i­ty to the af­fect­ed sec­tion was dis­con­nect­ed and mo­ments lat­er, a joint team of po­lice and sol­diers ar­rived to en­sure law and or­der was kept.

By ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6.30 pm, most of the fire had dis­si­pat­ed and on­ly smoke could be seen em­a­nat­ing from the build­ing lo­cat­ed on the north­ern part of the com­pound.

As the fire of­fi­cers con­duct­ed their du­ties, HSE (Health and Safe­ty) of­fi­cers as­signed to the com­pa­ny were seen ush­er­ing work­ers out of the ad­join­ing build­ing to safe lo­ca­tions.

Se­nior man­age­ment at An­gos­tu­ra was al­so at the scene look­ing on at the sit­u­a­tion, among them chair­man Ter­rance Bharath, SC.

He told Guardian Me­dia that due to the al­co­hol con­tent of the tanks, they were, “in the process of pump­ing foam in­to the area, so we are hop­ing that the fire doesn’t spread to the tanks which con­tain al­co­hol.”

He al­so com­mend­ed the Fire Ser­vice and staff for their re­sponse.

Rahim Mo­hammed, ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er of Busi­ness Ef­fi­cien­cy and Shared Ser­vices, said he was thank­ful that there was no in­jury to staff, as the health and safe­ty pro­to­cols were “well in place.”

He al­so said there was no need for con­cern as it re­lat­ed to ma­te­ri­als of a tox­ic na­ture.

Nei­ther Mo­hammed nor chair­man Bharath could speak to loss­es at the time, as the pri­ma­ry fo­cus was con­tain­ment of the fire.

Up to late yes­ter­day evening, the cause of the fire had not been de­ter­mined.