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Three warehouses gutted in Al Quoz

DUBAI - Three warehouses were gutted in Al Quoz Industrial Area yesterday morning. The Dubai Civil Defence operations room received an emergency call at 8.13am that a fire, which started at a ware house had been spreading to two neighbouring warehouses.

Flames and thick smoke could be seen from a distance. The first warehouse contained plastic and cotton items, while the other two contained audiovisual devices, refrigerators, washing machines and other electronics and home appliances.

A firefighting unit from Jumeirah fire station reached the location in few minutes. Also support units from Qusais, Rashidiya and Satwa fire stations reached the spot, in addition to an extra water tanker from Sharjah Civil Defence.

Fire fighters immediately managed to contain the blaze and prevent the fire from spreading to buildings behind those warehouses, which would have caught fire quickly as they contained wooden furniture.

Two plans of action were put in place - one to extinguish the fire and the other to prevent other buildings around the scene of the fire from getting destroyed.

The civil defence personnel emptied the affected warehouses of their contents with the help of workers from those warehouses. The temperature near the walls of the burning warehouses reached 90 degrees Celcius.

Civil defence units used modern equipment, including an infrared camera, to determine the centre of the fire and direct fire hoses at that single point, thus succeeding in extinguishing the fire in 67 minutes from when the initial report was lodged.

In all 56 fire fighters and 22 vehicles and three paramedics took part in the operations. Major Mohammed Abdullah bin Naseeb, Head of the Fire Stations Department at Dubai Civil Defence, stressed the importance of cooperation between the emergency services at the scene of a fire and urged warehouse owners to train workers on basic fire fighting and emergency response.

• UAE