BROWN’S TOWN, St Ann — Chief Justice Brian Sykes says while the fire that gutted the century-old courthouse in Brown’s Town, St Ann, on Sunday night was “very disruptive”, the court will continue to sit. In fact, cases were tried at nearby Addison Park Sports Complex on Monday.

“Though it is a distressing moment, all is not lost, and when you have strong and effective leadership on the ground, as we’ve had through the senior judge, Ms [Michelle] Salmon here, we have been able to resume and court is going on at Addison Park and will go on. So it will be inconvenient, but the court will continue,” Sykes told journalists Monday morning.

The fire, which reportedly started a few minutes after 7:00 pm, gutted the first floor of the building before spreading rapidly to the ground floor.

Senior deputy superintendent at the St Ann Fire Department, Anthony Hines, told the Jamaica Observer that the Brown’s Town fire department received a report that fire was coming from the building at approximately 8:00 pm.

“We got the call at 7:59 and three units were sent to the scene — two from St Ann’s Bay,” he said.

Scores of onlookers watched the firefighters battle the inferno, which destroyed computer equipment, paper files, and legal documents.

On Monday morning, only the charred building was left standing.

On Sunday night residents believe that the firefighters did their best to put out the blaze.

“They did, but the odds were against them. It is simple, this could have been avoided. You could put sprinklers in all government courthouses,” argued one man who gave his name as Rodney Kerr.

“It is a wake-up call. It is easier to spend a million dollars to retrofit courthouses with sprinklers than to build back one for $50 million,” Kerr added.

Another man, who gave his name only as Spuddy, argued that the firefighters had little chance of saving the building as it had wooden floors and a zinc roof.

“The kinda board and the wood weh inna it, pinewood full a oil. If them did have a hundred fire truck tonight it couldn’t out… as long as paper in there. If enough water was here, then probably it could cool down. Look pon the zinc them a go up in the air… it done gone already,” he said as he watched the flames destroying everything within the building.

“As the fireman seh, the board inna the stone and the stone them a get hot, so the building will collapse… the fire is going through the stone because a bare board in it,” Spuddy added.

Carl Edwards, a taxi driver, reasoned that the fire will severely impact judicial proceedings, as most cases will be delayed.

“A nuff people a go get setback and nuff people haffi go go St Ann’s Bay for court… Mi go down deh ’bout three times and mi a tell yu say down there no pretty… unless them a go get tents or rent places to try cases,” Edwards said.

On Monday, Chief Justice Sykes acknowledged that the fire had destroyed a lot of files.

“We have some older files that have been saved; we have some that have been converted into digital format going back to 2016. This will mean that we will have to rebuild the files, certainly from the police and also in respect of civil matters that are before the court. We’ll be reaching out to the attorneys to resubmit some of the documents that they may have filed in court,” he said.

“In terms of the criminal matters, largely the files coming in from the police, and the way in which they’ve organised themselves now where a lot of the statements, if not all the statements, are recorded on a computer we should have those statements available, and there might be third-party documents, such as forensic certificates, medical certificates, which we’ll have to retrieve from third parties to reconstruct those files so that they can proceed to final disposition,” he added.

“We’ll be having further dialogue now as to how we can make the best of the circumstances, that is to say, have the court sit, and also to make it as least inconvenient to court users as is possible,” the chief justice said.

“We’ll also have to have dialogue with the Ministry of Justice concerning the future of this court building and possibly the construction of a new court on lands that may be available nearby,” he added.