Six chil­dren were safe­ly evac­u­at­ed from a Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty Re­cep­tion Cen­tre in San Fer­nan­do on Sun­day af­ter a fire broke out in a bed­room on the build­ing’s sec­ond floor.

Ac­cord­ing to ini­tial re­ports, around 3.37 pm, smoke was ob­served com­ing from the west­ern side of the sec­ond floor.

An em­ploy­ee raised an alarm and, along with four col­leagues, swift­ly evac­u­at­ed the chil­dren while at­tempt­ing to con­tain the blaze. De­spite their ef­forts, the fire spread rapid­ly.

Po­lice and fire of­fi­cers were called, and fire­fight­ers from the Mon Re­pos Fire Sta­tion man­aged to ex­tin­guish the flames. Dam­age was con­fined to the bed­room and es­ti­mat­ed at $15,000.

In a press state­ment, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty con­firmed that the chil­dren were im­me­di­ate­ly re­lo­cat­ed to an­oth­er fa­cil­i­ty. It said the fam­i­lies of the chil­dren had been no­ti­fied of the sit­u­a­tion and as­sured that their chil­dren are safe. Coun­selling sup­port is al­so be­ing pro­vid­ed to the chil­dren to help them process the in­ci­dent.

Mean­while, the au­thor­i­ty stat­ed the fire’s ori­gin was still un­known and a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing. - Sascha Wil­son