Firefighters were struggling Friday night to contain a blaze that gutted the dilapidated Calliaqua Police Station and spread to the nearby bakery.
The cause of the fire and the destruction and damage it caused was not known to iWitness News at the time of this report, but the roof of the police station, the headquarters of the police district, collapsed as a result of the blaze.
The wooden floor of the two-story building is believed to have been destroyed as well.
A fire truck for Argyle International Airport was among three fire tenders that responded to the blaze as scores of onlookers gathered outside police cordons in the south coast town.
The blaze comes two months after Minister of National Security, St. Clair Leacock, decried in Parliament the deplorable condition of police stations across the country.
“The bed posts in Calliaqua, down the road, go through the floor because it’s termite-infested. There’s no solidity,” he told lawmakers as he debated the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for 2026 on Jan. 29.
“From officers to men, they live and sleep in squalor across St Vincent and the Grenadines. It’s deplorable; it’s depressing, and we, as an administration, have had to cut and contrive to address the unsatisfactory working conditions under which all men and women serve in St Vincent and the Grenadines,” Leacock said.
Leacock became minister of National Security on Dec. 3, following the Nov. 27 victory of the New Democratic Party at the polls, ending 25 years of Unity Labour Party governance.
“Any Minister of National Security worth his salt, having gone to the Calliaqua police station would have a long time ago — I don’t say we will succeed, but we’ll knock and knock and try and try to see even the short term, we can get the town hall, perhaps, to house them while we buy time to have a new edifice established, either for the police itself or for the people who need those town hall services,” Leacock said.
The police were still occupying the police station at the time of Friday’s blaze.
The blaze came two days before Leacock was slated to lead a four-member delegation on an official visit to Taiwan.
On Tuesday, Leacock said he would ask Taipei to donate a fleet of vehicles to help the police in SVG with their crime-prevention strategy.
This is a new standard, a video claiming a house is on fire without showing the actual house that is on fire.