Four Somali children killed in house fire

Four children and a woman died from inhaling smoke in a fire that broke out in a house in Al-Saheefa district in Jeddah Thursday afternoon.
The dead were Somalis. The fire started in a room at the entrance of the first-floor two-room apartment. Rescue teams and firefighters evacuated seven residents and moved them to a nearby polyclinic. A 30-year-old woman was discharged from hospital after receiving treatment while a 7-month-old infant is being treated at King Abdul Aziz Hospital.
The dead children are three boys and one girl aged between 3 and 8 years. The woman who died was in her 20s. They died at King Fahd Hospital and Jeddah National Hospital.
The ceiling of the 2.9-square-meter room was burned and the fire damaged parts of the room above it on the second floor. Investigations are under way to find out what caused the fire.
Another fire erupted Thursday in large warehouse for electrical supplies and cables, east of Breeman Bridge. The fire spread to another warehouse for spare parts, as well as a 10,000-square-meter workshop belonging to a company that sells electrical supplies.
Col. Said Sarhan, spokesman for Makkah Civil Defense, told Arab News that the fire broke out at around 1.30 p.m. and put out by 5 p.m. “As soon as we received the call, we sent 13 fire teams to the site. The fire had consumed the whole warehouse and the adjacent structures,” he said.
“At 50 degrees Celsius and high winds, it took the blaze only seven minutes to reach many parts of the warehouse. There were no injuries to any of the workers or staff at the warehouse. We thank God that we could manage the fire in time, because there was a gas station just 50 feet from the site. Our firefighters’ first action was to isolate the area in which the fire was spreading and prevent it from reaching the gas station,” he said.
“It was a very close call. But we managed to control the fire,” he added.