A major fire broke out in a residential-cum-commercial building on Abu Dhabi's busy Hamdan Street yesterday afternoon. It broke out in a tower building opposite Liwa Centre, destroying the ground floor of showrooms, but no casualties were reported.
It started little before three in the afternoon when all the shops in the area were closed for lunch break.
It was controlled from spreading to other parts of the building within 20 minutes after the firefighters arrived. A strong team from the fire brigade, General Directorate of the Civil Defence and Abu Dhabi City's Civil Defence Station was present at the scene.
The shops, according to a senior Civil Defence official, were all empty for maintenance, causing little financial and property damage.
Upon arrival the Civil Defence personnel deployed a number of huge exhaust fans to remove the thick smoke to prevent it from reaching the upper levels of the building.
However, the streets on both sides of the building were filled with thick smoke, which reduced visibility. Before using the fans, the fire brigade personnel broke the glass screens of the shops to allow smoke to go out.
They also found a cooking gas cylinder in one of the shops. It was immediately removed from the shop to a safe place.
Apart from the ground floor shops, the entire building remained unaffected.
"There was no need to evacuate the residents from the building because, after controlling the fire, the smoke was fully prevented from going upward," said First Lieutenant Jamal Aboud Al Jaeidi, Head of the Public Relations and Moral Guidance at the directorate.
About the damages and casualties, he said Ashraf Jewellers and a three-level Shopping Mall, owned by a Pakistani businessman, were lying vacant for the last two months.
"There were no casualties or major financial loses. But the biggest problem was the thick smoke in all the shops as timber, textile and plastic decorations and fittings caught fire, which also caused toxic gas hindering the firefighters.
"By the Grace of God no one was injured and the smoke was cleared quickly."
Throughout the operation, which took more than an hour, traffic on the main Hamdan Street kept on flowing smoothly as a strong team of the traffic police was at hand. But the area was initially blocked for a short while.
A huge crowd from the nearby residential buildings gathered to see the firefighting operation but was dispersed by police to avoid hindering the firefighters.
Gulf News
