Multi-million-dollar fire at La Romaine supermarket

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

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Calls are mount­ing for faster and more co­or­di­nat­ed ac­tion be­tween the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice (TTFS) af­ter wa­ter is­sues ham­pered fire­fight­ers bat­tling an ear­ly-morn­ing blaze that gut­ted the Anand Low Price Su­per­mar­ket in La Ro­maine, leav­ing about 100 em­ploy­ees from the su­per­mar­ket and neigh­bour­ing Bent­ley’s VIP tem­porar­i­ly job­less.

While the en­tire su­per­mar­ket, sit­u­at­ed on the up­per floor, was com­plete­ly de­stroyed, the Bent­ley VIP was saved as fire­fight­ers worked for hours try­ing to con­tain the flames.

This is the third fire to hit the south city over the past few months.

The lat­est fire, which broke out around 3.43 am at South Trunk Road, drew a co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse from the TTFS, with ap­pli­ances dis­patched from Mon Re­pos head­quar­ters, Pe­nal and Ch­agua­nas. How­ev­er, it was on­ly at 4.50 am that WASA was alert­ed and of­fered aid.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the scene, act­ing Deputy Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Ansar Ali said fire­fight­ers faced sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges on ar­rival, as low wa­ter pres­sure in the area and lim­it­ed ac­cess to the build­ing slowed con­tain­ment ef­forts.

“The wa­ter sup­ply in the area was a bit low, and we were even­tu­al­ly sup­port­ed by WASA tankers,” he said.

Flames were first ob­served at the front of the build­ing, clos­er to the high­way. Ac­cord­ing to Ali, the fire com­plete­ly gut­ted the up­per-lev­el hous­ing the gro­cery sec­tion of the su­per­mar­ket. While the ex­ter­nal walls re­main stand­ing, the in­te­ri­or was com­plete­ly de­stroyed, he said.

“The en­tire in­side has been gut­ted,” Ali said.

“The doors to the build­ing gave us some chal­lenges. They were steel doors locked from the in­side, which made ac­cess dif­fi­cult, along with the risk of col­laps­ing walls.”

Em­ploy­ees looked on in tears as the fire con­sumed the su­per­mar­ket. Bent­ley’s, lo­cat­ed be­low, was saved from de­struc­tion but sus­tained wa­ter dam­age dur­ing fire­fight­ing op­er­a­tions. Ali said the ho­tel sec­tion down­stairs suf­fered on­ly min­i­mal dam­age.

No in­juries or fa­tal­i­ties were re­port­ed, and Ali said there were no re­ports of any­one trapped in­side the build­ing. Fire­fight­ers man­aged to con­fine the blaze to the su­per­mar­ket, pre­vent­ing it from spread­ing to near­by struc­tures. Damp­en­ing op­er­a­tions were still on­go­ing hours lat­er, as crews worked to cool hot spots with­in the rub­ble.

Ali said he es­ti­mat­ed it to be a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar fire but said a pre­cise fig­ure would on­ly be de­ter­mined af­ter con­sul­ta­tions with man­age­ment and in­sur­ers. In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the cause of the blaze have been de­layed due to un­safe con­di­tions in­side the build­ing.

“We can’t en­ter to con­duct in­ves­ti­ga­tions at this time be­cause it’s still too hot,” he said.

Ali urged busi­ness own­ers to take fire safe­ty se­ri­ous­ly.

“Vis­it the Fire Ser­vice, have your place in­spect­ed, prac­tice prop­er house­keep­ing and stor­age, and en­sure your elec­tri­cal wiring is safe and se­cure,” he ad­vised.

On De­cem­ber 11, 2025, fire de­stroyed Prod­uct Cen­tral Trinidad’s Christ­mas Store on Cipero Street, San Fer­nan­do, de­stroy­ing the build­ing and its sea­son­al stock just two weeks be­fore Christ­mas. Just days ear­li­er, six peo­ple were left home­less when a fire de­stroyed a house at Mon Re­pos. There was al­so a fire at Ram­co In­dus­tries Ltd’s gas fa­cil­i­ty in Cross Cross­ing, San Fer­nan­do, on Ju­ly 24 last year, re­port­ed­ly fol­low­ing an ex­plo­sion. There has al­so been a fire at George Street, La Ro­maine, which de­stroyed a house.

Mean­while, WASA, in a state­ment, said it re­ceived no­ti­fi­ca­tion of the fire at 4.50 am, more than an hour af­ter the fire start­ed and ac­ti­vat­ed its emer­gency re­sponse pro­to­cols. It said by 5.28 am, WASA per­son­nel were on site and sys­tem pres­sures were ver­i­fied through the Wa­ter Op­er­a­tions Con­trol Sys­tem, con­firm­ing pres­sures on the South Trunk trans­mis­sions. WASA said a wa­ter tanker was de­ployed to the lo­ca­tion and fa­cil­i­tat­ed sev­en loads of wa­ter, bring­ing the fire un­der con­trol at 7.30 am. WASA said the sup­ply was avail­able and main­tained through­out the emer­gency.