Fireworks blamed as blaze guts electronics shop, destroys two homes

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

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A long-stand­ing Port-of-Spain elec­tron­ics re­pair busi­ness was gut­ted and two homes de­stroyed ear­ly yes­ter­day in a fire at Pic­cadil­ly Street, with res­i­dents point­ing to fire­works be­ing dis­charged by chil­dren short­ly be­fore the blaze erupt­ed.

No one was in­jured in the fire, but four dogs be­long­ing to busi­ness own­er Michael Ed­wards died.

Fire of­fi­cers from Wright­son Road and Wood­brook re­spond­ed short­ly af­ter mid­night to the blaze at the prop­er­ties near 74 Pic­cadil­ly Street.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing, the two build­ings were gut­ted.

One was a two-storey house owned by Ed­wards, where he op­er­at­ed Michael’s Elec­tron­ics. The oth­er was a sin­gle-storey house owned by Bren­da Lewis.

A third house near­by es­caped ma­jor dam­age but suf­fered bro­ken win­dows, and part of its roof was dam­aged.

Sev­er­al res­i­dents, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, claimed chil­dren had been play­ing with fire­works in the area be­fore the fire start­ed. They said the use of fire­works had be­come a fre­quent oc­cur­rence in the neigh­bour­hood and claimed the fire­works had been go­ing off for about 15 min­utes be­fore the build­ings caught fire.

Fire of­fi­cials said elec­tri­cal lines along the north­ern side of the prop­er­ties ham­pered their ef­forts to ex­tin­guish the blaze.

They dis­missed con­cerns about a lack of wa­ter, say­ing three fire trucks re­spond­ed and there was ad­e­quate wa­ter avail­able.

Fire of­fi­cials have not as­cer­tained the cause of the fire, but said res­i­dents did re­port the fire­works dis­charg­ing be­fore the blaze.

Carl Glen­roy Bal­four, a work­er at Michael’s Elec­tron­ics, said he was alert­ed by his part­ner.

“My part­ner was walk­ing in the gate, in the lane, and said, ‘Hey, the place is on fire. But I said, ‘What? Fire.’”

Bal­four ex­plained Ed­wards was up­stairs when the fire start­ed and man­aged to es­cape.

The loss was par­tic­u­lar­ly painful, he not­ed, be­cause Ed­wards’ busi­ness had be­come a fix­ture in the area, with cus­tomers reg­u­lar­ly lin­ing up on Sat­ur­days to have ap­pli­ances re­paired.

“This could be $1.7 mil­lion worth. It could be even more than that,” Bal­four es­ti­mat­ed.

Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land said his of­fice had al­ready be­gun mak­ing con­tact with Ed­wards and Lewis to de­ter­mine their im­me­di­ate needs.

Scot­land al­so ad­dressed the claims about fire­works, urg­ing par­ents to take greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for chil­dren us­ing them.

“If what is be­ing said is true, we can see the cat­a­stroph­ic re­sults, con­se­quences of the in­dis­crim­i­nate use of fire­works and scratch bombs,” he said.

Mean­while, Flow lines in the area were af­fect­ed by the fire. Work­ers were on site yes­ter­day car­ry­ing out re­pairs, with one work­er say­ing ser­vice was ex­pect­ed to be ful­ly re­stored by the af­ter­noon.