ALKHOBAR: Six people have been confirmed dead and 40 others reported missing following a massive fire that broke out on Sunday morning in a makeshift residential camp located close to the Khurasaniyah Gas Plant, about 140 km northwest of Dahran.
It is being described as the worst fire in recent years and one reason for it being reported late in the media was the absence of any official statement.
The camp, spread over an area of 50 sq. km, belongs to the Athens-based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) that has been tasked by Bechtel and Technip to construct the massive gas processing plant for Saudi Aramco. Top CCC officials refused to answer any media enquiry about Sunday’s accident. There was also no word from the Civil Defense officials.
However, a number of CCC employees and supervisors spoke to Arab News about the devastation of the fire. They refused to reveal their names because they had not been authorized to speak to the media.
Their versions, however, match the ones given to Al-Yaum Arabic daily yesterday (Tuesday). The workers said the fire broke out at 8.30 Sunday morning in one of the sections of the residential camp. According to them, nearly 400 workers were in that particular area at the time of the accident.
According to one CCC technical supervisor, company records listed six employees as dead. “Of them three are Bangladeshi nationals, two Filipinos and one Indian. Among the 40 missing are Bangladeshis, Nepalese, Indians, Pakistanis and Filipinos,” he said. “Going by what we have seen, we can only assume the worst,” he said.
The Khurasaniyah Gas Plant is located nearly 7 km from the residential camp.
“The camp is like a small city with a population of around 30,000,” said one camp resident. “A fleet of buses transport workers on a shift basis to the work site. Currently, an estimated 10,000 workers are employed at the site. At its peak, nearly 30,000 workers were working on the project. The project is nearing completion and will be handed over to Saudi Aramco by the end of this year.”
The fire broke out because of a leaking cooking gas cylinder in a kitchen in that particular quarter of the camp.
“Most of those who died were sleeping at the time of the accident. They had done their night shift and were asleep when the fire engulfed their porta-cabins. Most of the other workers were at the work site. They saw the devastation that the fire wreaked only when they came back during lunch break,” said the CCC supervisor.
“Some of the co-workers have reported counting nearly 15 bodies being transported to nearby ambulances,” he said.
The workers were horrified by the charred remains of some of their colleagues. “Many bodies were burned beyond recognition,” they said.
Civil Defense personnel battled the blaze for nearly four hours. The victims were sent to Jubail Central Hospital and Dammam Central Hospital. Nurses at the two hospitals spoke of receiving badly burned bodies.
“We don’t know their nationalities. They will have to conduct DNA tests to ascertain which country they are from,” one local newspaper quoted nurses as saying. According to the nurses’ account, they received more than 20 bodies. However, this figure was not corroborated by local authorities.
The blaze was visible from quite a distance on the Dammam-Khafji Highway.
However, many trailer drivers who spoke to local newspapers believed the fire was one of the many oil refinery flares that dot the Eastern Province skyline.
Some of the workers told Arab News that there were no adequate safety measures in the place where the accident occurred.
“There was only one escape route in that area. Even if the workers were awake, they would have found it difficult to escape. It would have been a near stampede if all of the 400 workers had been trying to escape from that area.” The company’s version of events is still awaited.
