Wa­ter short­ages and re­in­forced steel doors ham­pered fire­fight­ers as they bat­tled an ear­ly-morn­ing blaze that gut­ted Anand Low Price Su­per­mar­ket in La Ro­maine, leav­ing about 100 em­ploy­ees from the su­per­mar­ket and neigh­bour­ing Bent­ley’s tem­porar­i­ly job­less.

The fire, which broke out around 3:43 am at the Gulf City lo­ca­tion, drew a co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice, with ap­pli­ances dis­patched from Mon Re­pos head­quar­ters, Pe­nal and Ch­agua­nas. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, 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.