Fire alarm at ANR Robinson Airport tower triggers evacuation

Smoke was re­port­ed­ly seen com­ing from the air traf­fic con­trol tow­er at ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go on Tues­day, trig­ger­ing a fire alarm and forc­ing staff to evac­u­ate the build­ing.

Mul­ti­ple sources con­firmed that the fire alarm was ac­ti­vat­ed.

The evac­u­a­tion has af­fect­ed op­er­a­tions at the air­port, with Caribbean Air­lines flight BW1520 on the do­mes­tic air­bridge ground­ed.

An­oth­er source told Guardian Me­dia that a team from Trinidad is ex­pect­ed to trav­el to To­ba­go to ad­dress the is­sue.

The air traf­fic con­trol tow­er is re­spon­si­ble for con­trol­ling air­craft ap­proach­ing to land at the air­port, while air traf­fic con­trol at Pi­ar­co can man­age air­craft fly­ing across the area.

A source ex­plained that the tow­er’s con­trol ex­tends to rough­ly a four-mile ra­dius around the air­port, mak­ing it nec­es­sary for some­one to be sta­tioned there un­less con­tin­gency arrange­ments, such as air-to-ground ra­dio com­mu­ni­ca­tions, are put in place.

Guardian Me­dia al­so un­der­stands there was an is­sue with the tow­er a cou­ple of weeks ago which re­sult­ed in de­lays, al­though that prob­lem was sub­se­quent­ly re­solved.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go for an of­fi­cial com­ment and is await­ing a re­sponse.

Min­is­ter of Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our was al­so con­tact­ed on Tues­day. He asked that ques­tions be sent via What­sApp but had not re­spond­ed up to pub­li­ca­tion.