Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Giv­en the se­vere dry spell be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in the coun­try, a se­nior fire of­fi­cer is ad­vis­ing the pub­lic to take pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures to pre­vent fires.

Head of the South­ern Di­vi­sion, As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Mukhar­ji Ram­per­sad, made the com­men­ton Thurs­day af­ter a fire at the old San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates’ Court at Har­ris Street.

Emer­gency evac­u­a­tions were trig­gered at neigh­bour­ing build­ings be­fore mid­day af­ter the fire start­ed at the par­tial­ly-de­mol­ished build­ing.

Four years ago, the Ju­di­cia­ry shut down the build­ing and re­lo­cat­ed the courts.

Last year, the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry be­gan de­mol­ish­ing the build­ing but the project was halt­ed.

Speak­ing with re­porters, Ram­per­sad said two ma­jor ap­pli­ances from the Mon Re­pos Fire Sta­tion re­spond­ed and fire of­fi­cers saw fire on the sec­ond and third sto­ry of the derelict struc­ture.

While they con­tained the blaze, he said, low wa­ter pres­sure posed a chal­lenge.

He said, “We were able to con­tain and ex­tin­guish the fire with­out any dif­fi­cul­ty. How­ev­er, the low wa­ter pres­sure in the area did pose a prob­lem, but we were able to ex­tin­guish the fire with the avail­able re­sources that we had.”

He said they re­ceived as­sis­tance from a wa­ter truck from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty and the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion.

While the source of the blaze is still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed, he said,

“The build­ing is some­what used by some of the less for­tu­nate in the so­ci­ety for sleep­ing arrange­ments, it could pos­si­bly have been a care­less­ly dis­card­ed cig­a­rette end or smok­ing ma­te­ri­als.”

Due to the ex­ten­sive dry pe­ri­od in the coun­try, he ap­pealed to peo­ple to “pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion sim­i­lar to that of the bush fire sea­son to ad­here to all those guid­ance we would have giv­en to take pre­cau­tions for their homes and build­ings.”
He al­so ad­vised home­own­ers and res­i­dents to en­sure that around their homes were cleaned of un­want­ed ma­te­ri­als and that all clut­ter is dis­card­ed.