SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Just two weeks be­fore Christ­mas, a dev­as­tat­ing fire tore through the Christ­mas Store on Cipero Street in San Fer­nan­do, caus­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in loss­es.

The blaze, which be­gan around 2 pm yes­ter­day, de­stroyed the busi­ness, though for­tu­nate­ly, all em­ploy­ees es­caped un­harmed. Chan Rame­sar, who was at a near­by busi­ness place, said she saw fire com­ing from the up­per floor of the build­ing.

“We saw flames up­stairs, all of us just run out of the build­ing. We try to help the work­ers.”

She said there was a lot of smoke. “We lent them a fire ex­tin­guish­er, but it was of no use. The flames were too much. We called 999 for them,” Rame­sar re­called.

Peo­ple who worked near­by and wit­nessed the fire ex­pressed con­cern that there was no near­by fire hy­drant. They claimed fire of­fi­cers had to wait for a sec­ond ten­der to ar­rive for them to con­tin­ue ex­tin­guish­ing the blaze.

Les Ef­forts East/Cipero coun­cil­lor, Ryadd Ho­sein, said he had just left a statu­to­ry meet­ing when he saw the fire. Ex­press­ing sad­ness over the in­ci­dent, he said, “All the Christ­mas trees, bi­cy­cles, and cloth­ing… I feel sad for the busi­ness.”

Ki­ran Singh, Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce, said it was un­for­tu­nate, es­pe­cial­ly since peo­ple would be on the bread­line and the own­ers would have in­curred sig­nif­i­cant loss­es just two weeks be­fore Christ­mas.

“With two weeks to go be­fore Christ­mas, this is very bad for busi­ness. You will see a re­sult­ed loss of em­ploy­ment, of in­come, with two weeks to go be­fore Christ­mas. They would have their Christ­mas stock dis­played. This store was vig­or­ous in sales. They were open Sun­day to Sun­day.”

Singh said it was al­so a heavy blow to busi­ness on Cipero Street, but he praised the Fire Ser­vice for con­tain­ing the fire and pre­vent­ing the flames from spread­ing to near­by build­ings.

San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris and As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer in charge of the South­ern Di­vi­sion, Mukhar­ji Ram­per­sad, could not be reached for com­ment on the in­ci­dent.

Up to late last evening, of­fi­cials were still try­ing to de­ter­mine the cause of the fire.