SHARJAH, 12 September 2005 — Eighty-one workers were wounded yesterday when a fire broke out in warehouses containing chemical products in Sharjah and spread to their lodgings, the official Emirati news agency WAM reported.
Three workers suffered serious injuries before the blaze was put out by civil defense teams and police from Sharjah and nearby Dubai and Ajman, all members of the seven-strong UAE federation.
Troops from the UAE armed forces also helped extinguish the blaze, which broke out at dawn in an industrial zone of Sharjah.
The fire ravaged “two warehouses containing inflammable chemical products and a wood depot,” the news agency said.
It did not give the cause of the fire, but quoted the operations chief of Sharjah police, Abdullah Mubarak Al-Dukhan, as urging owners of commercial and industrial establishments to adhere to safety regulations and take necessary precautions.
The Sharjah fire, which took one and a half hours to put out, came two days after another blaze destroyed a shopping mall in the adjacent emirate of Dubai.
Two civil defense members were treated for smoke inhalation, but no other injuries were reported as the establishment was empty when the blaze broke out overnight Friday.
The daily Gulf News reported yesterday that Dubai police had charged 12 Indian workers with negligence for causing the fire that gutted the Oasis Center. The workers were conducting renovation work when the fire broke out, it said.
The paper quoted a civil defense official as saying the shopping mall’s fire alarm system which should have been connected to the fire station’s operations room had been disconnected while the maintenance work was under way.
