Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

A mas­sive fire yes­ter­day morn­ing gut­ted the east­ern sec­tion of RS Im­ports Whole­sale Ware­house 2000 in Chase Vil­lage, Ch­agua­nas, caus­ing mil­lions in in­fra­struc­ture dam­age and mil­lions more in busi­ness loss­es, ac­cord­ing to own­er Vi­jay Jaglal.

The ware­house, lo­cat­ed east of the Globe City Shop­ping Com­plex at the Tri­an­gle, hous­es sev­er­al busi­ness­es.

Jaglal said the de­stroyed sec­tion had been rent­ed to Chi­nese na­tion­als Jain Pin You and her hus­band Wayne Qui, op­er­a­tors of NU Cen­tu­ry and Quick­er Trad­ing.

Pin You told Guardian Me­dia that while loss­es are be­lieved to be in the mil­lions, it is too ear­ly to pro­vide an ex­act fig­ure as their com­put­er sys­tem, which con­tained stock records, was de­stroyed in the blaze.

Jaglal said he is await­ing of­fi­cial re­ports from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice (TTFS) be­fore com­ment­ing fur­ther on the pos­si­ble cause of the fire.

How­ev­er, he re­vealed a trou­bling in­ci­dent that oc­curred two months ago, when se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras from a near­by busi­ness cap­tured an uniden­ti­fied man car­ry­ing bot­tles of gaso­line. Jaglal said the man re­moved the cam­era be­fore leav­ing the area, and the mat­ter was re­port­ed to the Freeport po­lice. He not­ed that the sus­pect has not yet been iden­ti­fied.

Jaglal al­so ex­pressed con­cern for those who de­pend on the com­pound for their liveli­hood, not­ing that three food ven­dors op­er­ate from booths on the prop­er­ty.

He es­ti­mates that about 40 peo­ple could now be left with­out in­come as a re­sult of the fire.

Act­ing Deputy Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Ansar Ali said the blaze be­gan short­ly af­ter 9 am. Fire­fight­ers ar­rived to find the east­ern side of the build­ing ful­ly en­gulfed.

Ali said five fire ten­ders, a skylift and am­bu­lances were dis­patched to the scene. Crews were able to con­tain the fire to one sec­tion of the build­ing, pre­vent­ing it from spread­ing to near­by busi­ness­es.

“There was no short­age of wa­ter,” Ali not­ed, adding that the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) sup­plied a con­tin­u­ous flow of truck-borne wa­ter to as­sist fire­fight­ing ef­forts.

No in­juries or fa­tal­i­ties were re­port­ed.

Ali said it was too ear­ly to de­ter­mine whether ar­son was a fac­tor, but con­firmed that a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion will be con­duct­ed by the Cen­tral Fire In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit.

The blaze is be­lieved to have tak­en near­ly eight hours to ful­ly ex­tin­guish.

A gy­ro ven­dor op­er­at­ing on the com­pound said his busi­ness was spared but re­mains un­cer­tain about when op­er­a­tions will re­sume.

“I don’t know if I will open or lose—I still wait­ing,” he said.

Res­i­dent Nicholas Brit­to said he no­ticed thick black smoke ris­ing from the area while at home.

“When I came out, I saw smoke and flames all in the air,” he said, re­call­ing that the Vic­mol mat­tress fac­to­ry in the area had al­so been de­stroyed by fire years ago.

Head of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre, John­ny Abra­ham, con­firmed that the in­ci­dent is un­der ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.