5 killed in Sharjah tower fire, residents put up in alternative accommodation

Mahmoud Mohsen, Staff Reporter

Sharjah Civil Defence and field teams controlled a fire in a residential tower in Al Nahda area after evacuating residents from the building and allocated rooms to accommodate them, in cooperation with the competent authorities in the emirate.

Material losses, casualties and deaths were reported due to the fire, according to Major General Saif Al Zari Al Shamsi, Commander in Chief of Sharjah Police, head of the emergency, crisis and disaster management team in Sharjah.

He added that the operations room received a report at 10:51pm on Thursday, alerting that a fire erupted in a residential tower, and accordingly, civil defence vehicles from several centres were rushed to the site of the fire, along with police patrols and the National Ambulance. Major General Al Shamsi explained that the civil defence teams contained the fire, which continued until the early hours of dawn, and handed it over to the forensic laboratory.

 “The fire resulted in deaths and injuries, and the injured were transferred to the hospital to receive the necessary treatment,” Al Shamsi added.

He revealed that the fire erupted in the “Loloat Al Khaleej” residential tower in Al Nahda area, which consists of 3 buildings A, B, and C and includes 33 floors with a total of 750 apartments, indicating that after inspection, it was proved that the fire started on the first floor of Building B, and the flames blazed vertically until they caught several apartments until the last 33rd floor, resulting in the death of 5 people. Seventeen people suffered moderate to serious injuries due to suffocation from the fumes.

Twenty seven people with minor injuries were discharged from hospital after being given the necessary care and treatment.

Al Shamsi explained that, in cooperation with the Red Crescent Authority (RCA), 156 people, males and females, including 18 children, were housed in 69 rooms in Al Rayyan Tower.

He affirmed that he directed the relevant authorities of Sharjah Police to finalise the procedures to extract the official documents and records of the residents of the tower, which were damaged due to the fire, without the need to head to police stations, expressing the condolences of the Sharjah Police General Command to the families of the deceased.