Civil Defense firefighters evacuated a residential building covered in smoke and extinguished a fire in an adjacent two-story building on Wednesday afternoon on Gharnata Street in Jeddah.

One floor was being used to illegally store plumbing and electrical equipment. There were no casualties.

The six fire-fighting teams were challenged by thick smoke and hardware that blocked the passages to the building’s annex, which has a metal ceiling.

The firefighters used ladders to reach the ceiling and penetrate it to extinguish the fire before it could spread to other parts of the building, including a warehouse.

The tenant and the owner were summoned and are currently being investigated for using a residential building to store equipment.

Brig. Salem Al-Matrafi, the department director who personally supervised the operation, called on the public to immediately report any location where walled areas or buildings inside residential districts were being used as warehouses.

They were urged to call on the department’s safety division emergency number to report violation of the fire and safety regulations.