Fire destroys supermarket, leaves seven homeless

Sascha Wil­son

An ear­ly morn­ing fire caused mil­lions of dol­lars in dam­age af­ter de­stroy­ing a two-storey build­ing hous­ing A&S Fy­zo­ol Su­per­mar­ket and a home along Bonne Aven­ture Road, Gas­par­il­lo.

The fire start­ed just be­fore 4 a.m. and left sev­en peo­ple home­less. The fam­i­ly lived on the up­per floor of the build­ing, while the su­per­mar­ket op­er­at­ed on the ground floor.

Fire­fight­ers bat­tled the blaze for hours as chem­i­cals, au­to­mo­tive oil and oth­er flam­ma­ble sub­stances stored on the com­pound fu­elled the fire.

Rick Mo­hammed, own­er of A&S Fy­zo­ol Su­per­mar­ket, said a neigh­bour alert­ed him to the fire around 4.30 a.m. He said his five ten­ants safe­ly evac­u­at­ed.

"They evac­u­at­ed in the back and they went through by the neigh­bour fence, so every­body is safe, so that is good."

While the cause of the fire has not yet been de­ter­mined, Mo­hammed sus­pects it may have been linked to an elec­tri­cal is­sue.

"It seems as though, I'm not say­ing it is, but it seems as though it's elec­tri­cal, be­cause yes­ter­day, elec­tric­i­ty went in the area, and it didn't come back."

Mo­hammed said the busi­ness al­so op­er­at­ed as a whole­sale sup­pli­er of elec­tron­ics, au­to­mo­tive oils, spray paints and oth­er items.

Al­though fire­fight­ers re­spond­ed quick­ly, he said they ini­tial­ly en­coun­tered wa­ter sup­ply prob­lems.

"They had to get some trucks with some tanks and so on."

He es­ti­mat­ed his loss­es would amount to mil­lions of dol­lars and de­scribed the de­struc­tion as com­plete.

"Well, we have, every­thing is a to­tal loss. So, we have, to thank Al­lah for life. So, we just had a build back up. So, to­tal, to­tal loss. No, no com­ing back."

As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer for the South­ern Di­vi­sion Noel Stew­art said fire­fight­ers from the Mon Re­pos Fire Sta­tion ini­tial­ly re­spond­ed, but crews from the Pe­nal and Savonet­ta Fire Sta­tions were lat­er called in to as­sist. Per­son­nel from WASA, T&TEC and the po­lice al­so re­spond­ed.

"In that build­ing they housed ac­cel­er­ants and aerosols and oils for ve­hi­cles, and that caused a bit of a chal­lenge for us be­cause there was con­stant burn­ing and flar­ing up but we were able to con­tain the fire."

Stew­art said fire­fight­ers ini­tial­ly ex­pe­ri­enced wa­ter sup­ply is­sues, but these were quick­ly re­solved with as­sis­tance from ad­di­tion­al fire ap­pli­ances, WASA and the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion.

He thanked all re­spond­ing agen­cies for their as­sis­tance and ef­fi­cien­cy, adding that fire­fight­ers pre­vent­ed the blaze from spread­ing to an­oth­er res­i­dence be­hind the gut­ted build­ing.

Stew­art said the cause of the fire re­mains un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.