The spate of fires that struck the Guyana National Industrial Corporation (GNIC) facilities has raised “serious concerns” and the company has engaged the authorities to do a comprehensive investigation, the shipping company said yesterday.

In its first official statement since the last fire on January 11, the company said its operations had returned to normalcy. The fire was the third to strike the company within a year and destroyed a section of a bond housing barrels and other items. There was no information in yesterday’s release on the amount of barrels that might have been damaged or destroyed.

On February 27, last year a fire at the complex resulted in five buildings being scorched while two abandoned buildings sustained substantial damage. Following that incident, a fire of unknown origin on October 2, gutted a section of the company’s complex damaging two buildings. At the scene of the October 2 fire, GNIC’s Chief Executive Officer, Clinton Williams had expressed concern that “something is definitely wrong”.

The statement yesterday did not say whether the cause of the fires had been ascertained but thanked the Guyana Fire Service, “who worked untiringly to bring the fire under control thus minimizing damage”.