Two women found dead after apartment fire in Port of Spain

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Two women were found dead at an apart­ment af­ter a fire at the build­ing on Fri­day night.

Ac­cord­ing to fire of­fi­cials, they re­spond­ed to a fire at the Co­ehlo Build­ing along Prince Street be­tween Char­lotte and Nel­son Streets at around 9.30 pm on Fri­day night.

Of­fi­cers said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 peo­ple were liv­ing on the third floor of the build­ing and, up­on ar­rival, res­cued four peo­ple, some from in­side the build­ing and oth­ers from the roof. Those res­cued ranged in age be­tween 18 and 55.

Af­ter ex­tin­guish­ing the blaze, of­fi­cers re­turned to the fire sta­tion at around 2.30 am to­day.

Of­fi­cers said no one in­formed them that any­one was un­ac­count­ed for.

Af­ter elec­tric­i­ty was cut from the sur­round­ing ar­eas, fire of­fi­cials left the scene due to poor light­ing and re­turned at around 6.30 am to­day. Dur­ing a walk­through of the third floor, where the fire was most­ly con­tained, of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered the bod­ies of the women in a bath­room and a bed­room.

The women were iden­ti­fied as 23-year-old Aaliyah Grif­fith and 60-year-old Su­san Ram­lo­gan.

Fire of­fi­cials say the cause of the fire is yet to be de­ter­mined.

The dam­age is es­ti­mat­ed at $4 mil­lion, while the build­ing is es­ti­mat­ed to be val­ued at $10 mil­lion.