Jamaica’s Long Pond Distillery
has lost more than 65,000 liters of rum in a fire which began in the producer’s
cane fields. The
fire started in cane fields near the Long Pond distillery, midday on Monday 16
July, and spread to parts of the fermentation room and the fresh rum stocks,
destroying 65,000 liters of Long Pond’s reserves. The distillery itself and the stills were unaffected,
and no staff members were injured in the fire.
The
distillery said that firefighters were called to the blaze at 1:30 pm on Monday.
Fire of unknown origin destroyed the distillery
storage area at the Long Pond Sugar Factory in Trelawny on Monday afternoon of
July 16th. The fire which workers at the estate say started in a
section of a cane field at the estate, burned through the cane field and engulfed
the distillery room where the main stock of rum is kept.
A large reserve of rum in Long Pond Sugar
Factory's distillery storage in Trelawny Parish was destroyed after a pile of
bagasse from the sugar cane field caught fire and quickly spread to the
distillery area, the Jamaica Observer reported.
Firefighters responded to the fast-moving fire and were able to contain
it, but were not able to save the storage area of the distillery. "Basically, what is happening here is
that the fire is confined to the main store area. One area stores alcohol and
the other section stores mainly raw material to make rum," Deputy
Superintendent Roland Walters, divisional commander for the Trelawny Division
of the Jamaica Fire Brigade, told the Jamaica Observer.
