11 labourers die in a fire at a camp in Abu Samra
At least 11 people lost their lives and 12 were injured in a major fire that ripped through a labour accommodation of a company working on the Salwa Tourism Project on Wednesday.
The fire at Abu Samra, which started around 6.30pm local time, spread fast. Firefighters who rushed to the area started fighting the blaze and were successful in preventing it from spreading further.
Around 1,000 workers, who were evacuated from the scene, have been temporarily housed in the company’s other accommodation sites.
A tweet from Qatar’s Ministry of Interior first alerted the public about the fire.
“Civil Defence contained the ‘fire that broke out on Wednesday at a labour accommodation of company working on Salwa Tourism Project,’ the initial tweet read.
Later, it updated with another tweet “11 people died and 12 injured in the fire and they are hospitalized.”
The bodies of the victims have been charred beyond recognition and have been kept at the Hamad Medical Corporation mortuary. The nationalities of the deceased are not yet known.
While incidents of fire during summers are nothing new to country, it is not often that such deadly blazes happen.
In February, a 35-year-old Indian worker had been killed in a fire in a labour camp in Al Shahaniya.
In April, another fire had broken out at an $825m mall under construction, but some 14,000 labourers and staff had been evacuated safely. There were no injuries reported then.
The latest fire is believed to be the deadliest in the country since a 2012 blaze at the Villaggio mall, which killed 19 people, including 13 children, many of them foreigners.
An investigation has been launched into the cause of the latest fire. We will publish more details as we have them.
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Poor labours , may their souls rest in peace.
It needs to be mentioned that these labour camps are hell holes. They are at God's mercy.
Partitioning and over crowded accommodations ought to be fought against by concerned authorities.......The point is that when a building is built, all safety plans are 100% in place. But after authorities Inspections & Approvals, the so called Housing Agents go there ways and make illegal partitions to make more money in rents. When this is done, all Safety Plans in the house become useless(Example, some parts of the accommodation have no water sprinklers, Fire extinguishers etc)
My take on this is that there should be yearly Inspections on houses to validate the approved design/plan.
God bless Qatar.
Anglo. It's the middle management who is culprit ......... they never dare to enter their boss's office ......... how can the workers expect any facility / benefit from a foreman / supervisor .......... ? They fear the management like a rat from a cat .................
May the departed rest in peace and the injured heal quickly, in the mean time jail the sponsor,
Hope the dependents of the deceased and injured get properly compensated.
The sponsor is legally responsible to all the employees.
Man, makes me mad, sponsors top management, all make good money at the expense of the lowest paid employee yet we cannot compensate them properly for the jobs they do.
MM: You are right.. The workers should carry out daily checks on their homes and make sure all electrical wiring is in order and fire systems are fuctioning properly...
So sad, We need to be extra vigilant for our surroundings, spread awareness among you staff for proper maintenance of electrical equipments ........ a small step will go in a long way to control such incidents ...........
WE are responsible for OUR own safety .............
لا حول ولا قوة الا بالله
But I'm afraid they will get an ambassador post in a European country.
Of course, I mean the 'big bosses'.
WT.why should it be the Supervisor and not the Manager?
If top management doesn't appropriate enough resources to get workers a safe accommodation what can an "ordinary" Supervisor do?.
In this land especially very few companies do take Safety seriously.When A safety speaks no one listens but when anything goes wrong all fingers are on him.
If people should go to jail it should be those big bosses who seat in well ventilated offices and 3 star apartments who have no feeling for the plight of labourers who toil all day under extreme conditions,enter unventilated buses and sleep in unsafe accommodations.
Lets see!!
WT: We can hope but I doubt that will happen
We can only hope that the responsible supervisors spend the rest of their miserable lives in jail!
many of these companies do not always want to follow safety rules because they do not want to spend money for the well being of their workers
RIP.
it is sad , it is difficult to tell what happened. Authorities will surely get the root causes
Very sad !
Tragic ... May the deceased test in peace and may the injured make full recoveries ...
A few questions come to mind:
Were there fire control systems in place ?
Why couldn't they escape ?