Egypt Investigates Parliament Fire

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Fireman Dies Following Shoura Council Fire, Investigation Continues

By Mostafa El Sawy

First Published: August 20, 2008

CAIRO: A fireman died on Wednesday from injuries sustained during the night-long efforts to control the fire that broke out Tuesday afternoon at the Shoura Council, Minister of Interior Habib Al-Adly told reporters outside the gutted building yesterday.

The minister also ruled out arson.

On Tuesday night, as the fire was still raging, Cairo’s Governor Abdel-Azim Wazir initially told reporters that there were no serious injuries just minor suffocation cases.

The governor also ruled out arson, saying “Please let us focus on the problem without misleading people with those worthless rumors.”

“We will wait for the Prosecution Office’s investigations to reveal more details about the reasons behind the fire,” the governor said.

At the time, the governor said, “The fire is being dealt with seriously and enormous efforts are being exerted to put out the fire. But the problem is the building’s wooden floors,” which fuelled the blaze.

The governor expressed his shock that such an important building could face a problem like this.

Although reports indicate that the fire was under control by dawn, smoke was still seen over the historical 9th-century building at 7:30 am Wednesday.

“Four emergency service staff members and nine people who were in the building, were reported injured, suffering from smoke inhalation,” an official at the Ministry of Interior’s media department told Daily News Egypt on Wednesday.

An eyewitness said that the fire started at around 4:30 pm and that it would have been easier to control if firefighters had responded more promptly. Onlookers said emergency service staff arrived 45 minutes later.

Firefighting departments were called in from surrounding governorates to help quell the flames. Trucks from Cairo, Helwan and Maadi fire departments were spotted on the scene along with fire trucks from the Cairo Petroleum Refinery Company and the Egyptian Armed Forces.

The flames touched the rooftop of the Tax Authority building, but firefighters were able to put that fire out in less than 15 minutes.

The ceilings of each of the Shoura Council’s three-storey building collapsed. The fire, which began on the third floor, spread downwards, engulfing the other two floors over the course of several hours.

Two army firefighting helicopters were sent to drop water over the burning flames, but they missed their target on the first attempt as most of the water was poured on the reporters and security officials standing by.

Both the fire trucks and the helicopters were faced with a shortage of water.

The helicopters went from the Shoura Council to the nearby Nile River to refill the small buckets, which did nothing to diminish the flames. Those attempts lasted around 20 to 30 minutes.

“The fire trucks were not well equipped nor were the firefighters well-trained; to be fair it should be said that huge efforts were exerted but in an inexperienced unorganized way,” Nabil Ahmed Abdullah, production security supervisor at a petroleum company who witnessed the incident, told Daily News Egypt on site a little after midnight.

Although state TV advised people to take alternative roads, instead of the vital Al Qasr Al Aini Street, home to the Council, the road was not blocked. The resulting traffic jam hindered firefighting efforts.

Several eye witnesses including one of the paramedics’ team said that two Shoura Council employees were trapped inside the building earlier when the fire started and were later seen clinging to the building’s outer pipes for more than 30 minutes before security forces helped them down.

A former general in the Civil Defense, which overseas the fire department, criticized the government’s response.

“Something wrong happened,” Gen. Adel el-Abodi said. “How come a whole building caught fire in an hour? Where are the fire alarms and where are the sprinklers?”

It was the second fire in the parliament’s upper house in 10 years, he said. “But in 1998, we managed to control the fire in the room it erupted in,” he said. –Additional reporting by AP.

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