Historic South Oropouche post office destroyed by fire

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

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A his­toric South Oropouche land­mark was re­duced to ash­es on Sat­ur­day af­ter fire de­stroyed the aban­doned post of­fice and for­mer War­den’s Of­fice, with flames spread­ing to the roof of a neigh­bour­ing home where 15 peo­ple, in­clud­ing Venezue­lan mi­grants, live.

The fire broke out short­ly af­ter mid­day at the long-aban­doned wood­en post of­fice on the South­ern Main Road. Al­though the build­ing was com­plete­ly de­stroyed, fire­fight­ers pre­vent­ed the blaze from en­gulf­ing the ad­join­ing home of Pun­dit Vish­nu Ma­haraj.

Ma­haraj said he im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed emer­gency ser­vices af­ter spot­ting the fire.

“That place was on fire. I called emer­gency one time,” he said.

While part of his roof sus­tained fire dam­age, Ma­haraj said he was re­lieved fire­fight­ers stopped the flames from spread­ing fur­ther.

“I haven’t es­ti­mat­ed the dam­age yet, but I saw the roof was al­most on fire. I’m glad it didn’t catch prop­er­ly be­cause there are 15 peo­ple liv­ing here,” he said.

Ma­haraj said sev­er­al Venezue­lan mi­grants rent apart­ments on his prop­er­ty, but they were not dis­placed by the fire. He al­so praised the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice for its quick re­sponse.

Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion May­or and coun­cil­lor for the area, Dood­nath Mayrhoo, said the aban­doned post of­fice and neigh­bour­ing War­den’s Of­fice were im­por­tant pieces of the com­mu­ni­ty’s his­to­ry.

“I re­ceived a call about an hour ear­li­er in­di­cat­ing that a build­ing was on fire. By the time I ar­rived, the old post of­fice had been com­plete­ly de­stroyed be­cause it was a wood­en struc­ture,” he said.

Mayrhoo said the post of­fice had been aban­doned for be­tween 20 and 30 years, while the ad­ja­cent build­ing had once housed the area’s War­den’s Of­fice.

“That was a very his­toric land­mark, and so too was the War­den’s Of­fice next door. Many of us re­mem­ber those build­ings from when we were chil­dren more than 50 years ago,” he said.

He said the cor­po­ra­tion would work with the rel­e­vant state agen­cies to as­sist Ma­haraj once the of­fi­cial fire re­port is com­plet­ed.

Mayrhoo al­so urged the State to pre­serve the site’s his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance, sug­gest­ing it could be re­de­vel­oped in­to a pub­lic fa­cil­i­ty or trans­ferred to the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion for com­mu­ni­ty use.

The may­or lament­ed the loss of an­oth­er piece of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ar­chi­tec­tur­al her­itage.

“We are los­ing our his­toric val­ues. These beau­ti­ful build­ings that are 40, 50, 60 and even 70 years old could have been pre­served as mu­se­ums or her­itage sites to teach fu­ture gen­er­a­tions about our his­to­ry,” he said.

Mayrhoo said the aban­doned build­ing had no elec­tric­i­ty, but home­less peo­ple were known to shel­ter there from time to time. Res­i­dents re­port­ed see­ing smoke be­fore the blaze in­ten­si­fied, but no one saw any­one leav­ing the build­ing.

La Brea MP Clyde El­der al­so vis­it­ed the scene.

The cause of the fire re­mains un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.