04 August, 2007

Burning Warehouse. LIVE.


Yesterday, as customary, I went on to play a bit of footie. We gather around at 4 and kickoff once we are all there.
I headed first towards "The Centre" to buy me some socks only to see a great pillar of black smoke on the horizon. We drove in a little bit closer.
A warehouse was burning. Huge fire and lots of smoke. There were Police Vehicles and two Fire trucks.
I took a couple of pictures and started capturing video.
I am of course unfamiliar of fire fighting at all. So everything I say here could be knocked out by a single informed opinion. But it looks to me like there wasn't enough fire trucks on the scene. A single hose battled for about 15-20 minutes while I was there with no extra support making the blaze only spread to other directions.
Akhbar Alkhaleej said that fire fighters fought for more than three hours. They reported it was owned by Mr. Ghulam Alnamlaiti, and threatened 10 other warehouses plus high voltage lines.
AK also reported that over 50 individuals and 18 vehicles fought the fire. I don't know about that. Maybe eventually they were 50 and 16 other trucks came, but that isn't the number I saw, (just watch my video below). They Also reported that a truck needed only 3 minutes to refill its water tank from Bapco. Hmm.. Plausible but I didn't see any more trucks coming in with fresh water.
A great deal of thanks must go to Mr. Hassan Ali Almiraaj, who Alayam reported, gave all his water resources of his farm to assist in the fight. That is a noble thing to do.

Anyhow, I am a bit concerned about this. Whether how true the numbers are or how much I can rely on our fire fighters. Don't get me wrong, this is a brave thing they are doing. And I am sure they are more than capable. It just seems to take allot of time to act or coordinate with other officials. Kinda scary that.

2 comments:

Mahmood Al-Yousif said...

I suppose that we should be thankful that they responded at all!

Namlaiti even printed a 1/4 sized ad thanking the Ministry of Interior for bravely fighting the fire... BD150,000 or more lost.

Redbelt said...

Akhbar alkhaleej wrote today a "clarification" regarding "rumors" that the fire wasn't fought properly. Strangly enough simply one day after I posted my link on your much visited blog, Mahmood.
They showed a picture of 4 or 5 fire fighters with a hose on the other side. Comeforting. But still, it isn't 18 vehicles nor 50 fire fighters on the scene.
I still call bluff.