MAJOR BLOW

A major fire on Ashenheim Road in St Andrew on Monday has left millions of dollars in damage, destroying 90 per cent of Pure Ice Factory’s assets and all of the inventory Azan’s Supercentre was storing for its Cross Road branch with the crucial Christmas season fast approaching.

Speaking with The Gleaner as he stood outside the warehouse blanketed by thick black smoke, a dispirited General Manager Kamaal Azan said the losses would be a great setback for Azans Supercentre, but he is confident of a bounceback.

“This is a huge loss. We have most of our products in for Christmas that were here in storage, so this is a major, major blow,” he said. “You can look at the devastation. It’s tough.”

He expressed relief, however, that there were no casualties.

“Everybody made it out. [There was] no loss of life and that’s the most important thing, and with God’s grace, we will rebuild,” he added, noting that the warehouse employed roughly 30 people.

“I have a lot of families that depend on me. We employ over 250 people and their families depend on the jobs that they have with us, so it is important to ensure that we come back and come back strong,” Azan said.

Jeffery Moss Solomon, a shareholder at the neighbouring Pure Ice Factory, said the fire consumed the majority – if not all – of the company’s manufacturing assets, inventory, and storage assets.

At the same time, he, too, was grateful that there was no loss of life or injuries.

“But it is going to be tremendously difficult to recover from. Thank God, we are a company in good standing. We have insurance, but it still does not mean we are going to be back quickly,” he told The Gleaner.

“We have a lot of obligations to our shareholders, employees, customers. It’s going to be very hard to recover, but we will do what we have to do and come back bigger and better because we are the main ice producer in the island,” Moss Solomon said.

Asked how the fire will impact the company’s Christmas operations, he said, “It is still very early stages to say what will happen. We have to wait until the dust settles because there can be damage that is not visible to the eyes.”

He estimated the fire damage to be at least 90 per cent, but noted that the company has already kick-started the recovery process by contacting suppliers and sourcing quotes.

Azan told The Gleaner that he heard that the fire reportedly started after sparks were seen on a nearby light post.

“Unfortunately, the reports are that there was a gash on the light pole, and then the warehouse manager called and said that there was a fire in the warehouse, and by the time we came down, the place was engulfed,” he said.

However, Winsome Callum, director of corporate communication at the Jamaica Public Service, said that while the power company had “received reports of the fire, there has so far been no report linking JPS to the incident”.

Senior Superintendent Patrick Gooden, divisional commander of the Kingston and St Andrew Division of the Jamaica Fire Brigade (JFB), also indicated that the JFB did not receive any such information.

Callum, however, added, “After the fire started, JPS was called to assist the fire department by making the area safe for them to respond. This is a routine part of our operations – we provide support to first responders in situations like this.”

She said the JPS would be looking into the claim of sparks on a light pole.

The fire, which reportedly began sometime after 1 p.m., raged for hours as the thick black smoke, coupled with the pungent smell of burning plastic, filled the air.

Gooden said seven units with 65 firefighters responded to the fire.

He said after receiving a call at 1:28 p.m., the first unit arrived to find both facilities already engulfed in flames.

“There were challenges with respect to the volumes of water coming from the hydrants. All the hydrants along this corridor, the volume of water coming [was] extremely low, which is not helpful to us in this operation, so we had to go as far as Mandela Highway to get water so that would have hampered the operation,” he said.

tanesha.mundle@gleanerjm.com