Warehouse gutted in Sharjah morning fire

Two major fires were reported in the last couple of days in Sharjah Industrial areas 11 and 13, gutting the warehouse of a plastic manufacturing company and another warehouse that caused lighter filling chemicals and cosmetics.

Fumes from a warehouse that contained gas, used for filling cigarette lighters, have been coming out a few days after the fire.

The second fire near the new bridge at National Paints happened at the premises of City Pack, which started after 2am on Monday and raged till the afternoon.

 Sharjah Police is investigating the reasons for the early morning fire that caused huge loss of packaging materials stocked in the warehouse.

“City Pack warehouse belonged to ENPI Group (Emirates National Plastic Industries) which contained plastic packaging materials and cartons used by restaurants and the food industry. The fire started at around 2am on Monday, but there was no employees in the warehouse. The company incurred heavy losses and it is believed that there is no casualty,” said a source related to City Pack. 

Highly inflammable packaging materials and chemicals fuelled the fire that raged for hours, making it difficult for civil defence teams from different Emirates to control the blaze, which continued till the afternoon. 

Many employees were working in the warehouse but when they saw the fire, they managed to escape.

In another major fire, two closely located warehouses located in the Industrial Area 13 were fully gutted, leaving smoke and flames for a couple of days. “Smoke and flames from the fire continued for a couple of days because the burnt warehouse stocked lighter gas filling chemicals as well as other inflammable materials. A number of labour camps located in the vicinity have been relocated and the construction workers spent a sleepless night, fearing spread of fire from the burnt warehouse,” said residents living in the neighbourhood. Vehicles parked outside the vehicle are also burnt in the fire.

“Occasionally we could hear minor explosions from the burnt warehouses and the Civil Defence team kept pouring water to keep the fire from spreading further,” added residents.

One of the two gutted warehouses contained garments, papers, cosmetics, soaps and detergents etc. Many employees were working in the warehouse no one was injured.

EARLIER REPORT

A huge fire has been reported on Monday morning, in a factory near the National Paints flyover in Sharjah.

Saeed Obaid Al Suwaidi, Director of Fire Station, Sharjah Civil Defense, told Emirates 24|7 that the early morning fire broke out in a plastics factory in the Sharjah Industrial Area.

"The fire broke out a little before 4am in a factory for plastic in the Indusrtial Area behind National Paints. It is still burning at this point, but Civil Defense has managed to bring it under control to prevent it from spreading to other factories, which was a potential risk because there are two factories behind this one," Al Suwaidi said in comments to this website.

He added that there have been no injuries or casualties as the factory was unmanned at the time the fire started. "There are no injuries, and there was nobody inside the factory when the fire broke out. Civil Defense has evacuated the nearby labour camp and nobody is in danger at this point," he said.

"Civil Defense received the call at 4am, and arrived at the location minutes after. Currently there are about 30 firefighters extinguishing the fire," Al Suwaidi said.

Emirates 24|7 readers have sent in images of thick black smoke billowing from a building. Eyewitnesses say that traffic has been worse than usual mainly due to people slowing down to spot the smoke.

Earlier, an eyewitness told this website that the fire appears to have broken out early in the morning. “Firefighters are in the area,” he said.

According to eyewitnesses, the fire hasn’t been spreading but at this time the cause of the fre remains unknown.

"There's either another fire in Sharjah or some really spectacular cloud formations this morning" tweeted a resident. 

(Reader's picture: Pritesh Shah)

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