Works Ministry closes road near Chase Village fire scene

A tem­po­rary road clo­sure is now in ef­fect be­tween the Chase Vil­lage over­pass and the South­ern Main Road, in the vicin­i­ty of Thomp­son Road, as emer­gency re­sponse ac­tiv­i­ties con­tin­ue fol­low­ing a fire at the RS Im­ports Whole­sale Ware­house 2000 in Chase Vil­lage, Ch­agua­nas.

In a pub­lic no­tice is­sued to­day, the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture said the clo­sure was nec­es­sary to fa­cil­i­tate on­go­ing op­er­a­tions by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice in the area.

Mo­torists ex­it­ing the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way south­bound and seek­ing to ac­cess Chase Vil­lage are be­ing ad­vised to use al­ter­na­tive routes, in­clud­ing the Fac­to­ry Road, Ch­agua­nas ex­it or the Freeport ex­it via St Mary’s Junc­tion.

A mas­sive fire on Tues­day morn­ing gut­ted the east­ern sec­tion of the ware­house, caus­ing an es­ti­mat­ed $50 mil­lion in in­fra­struc­ture dam­age and mil­lions more in busi­ness loss­es.

The ware­house, lo­cat­ed east of the Globe City Shop­ping Com­plex at the Tri­an­gle, hous­es sev­er­al busi­ness­es.

Own­er Vi­jay Jaglal said the de­stroyed sec­tion had been rent­ed to Chi­nese na­tion­als Jain Pin You and her hus­band Wayne Qui, op­er­a­tors of NU Cen­tu­ry and Quick­er Trad­ing.