Trinidad: Electronic device found following parkade explosion

(Trinidad Guardian) Po­lice have con­firmed that an elec­tron­ic de­vice was re­cov­ered at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus’ Parkade fol­low­ing an ex­plo­sion yes­ter­day.

In a re­lease, the po­lice said the de­vice was dis­cov­ered “on the west­ern side of the build­ing.”

How­ev­er, no fur­ther in­for­ma­tion was giv­en by the po­lice on the na­ture of the de­vice, nor its role in yes­ter­day’s ex­plo­sion.

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials told Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

They al­so in­di­cat­ed that a sec­ond de­vice was found, how­ev­er, this was not con­firmed.

There were “no re­port­ed in­juries nor dam­age to prop­er­ty or ve­hi­cles.”

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, an ex­plo­sion was heard around 8 am fol­low­ing which mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, in­clud­ing the Ex­plo­sive De­tec­tion and Dis­pos­al Unit and Fire Ser­vices, re­spond­ed.

A three and a half-hour long search was con­duct­ed and the de­vice was dis­cov­ered. Com­ment­ing on the mat­ter, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith not­ed that it took three hours af­ter the ex­plo­sion for the parkade em­ploy­ees to in­form the emer­gency per­son­nel. He ad­vised that, in such in­stances, peo­ple should al­ways err on the side of cau­tion and im­me­di­ate­ly in­form the emer­gency ser­vices.

Di­vi­sion­al fire of­fi­cer and bomb tech­ni­cian John Harp­er told Guardian Me­dia that all pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures were tak­en. This in­clud­ed evac­u­at­ing the parkade and sur­round­ing build­ings. This in­clud­ed work­ers from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion as well as the var­i­ous min­istries con­tained in the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus who all con­gre­gat­ed along the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade.

The area be­tween In­de­pen­dence Square North and Queen St be­tween Ed­ward St and Rich­mond Street was cor­doned off while po­lice of­fi­cers man­aged the flow of both ve­hic­u­lar and pedes­tri­an traf­fic around the area. This sub­se­quent­ly led to mod­er­ate to heavy traf­fic con­ges­tion along Wright­son Road.

Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Don­na Cox al­so sent out a state­ment fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent.

She ac­knowl­edged that they re­ceived re­ports of the in­ci­dent and ad­vised mem­bers of the pub­lic to co­op­er­ate with the se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel on the ground and fur­ther ad­vised peo­ple to re­frain from ven­tur­ing in­to the area.