At least four workers were killed and 39 injured when a fire broke out on Thursday in a tower under construction in Dubai, the trading hub of the United Arab Emirates, a hospital official and witnesses said.
”Three bodies were found on the scene and another died before arriving at Rashid Hospital,” a hospital official said.
Dozens of workers were trapped by thick smoke as rescue crews tried to reach them.
Witnesses said they saw a man fall from one of the 37-storey building’s upper floors.
”Some of the workers were trying to climb down on cables. One guy in red was trying to climb down and then he just fell. It was horrible,” said Louise Olson (25), from Denmark, who watched the scene from her whirlpool bath in a high-rise that faces the burning tower.
”It was kind of like 9/11,” said Steven Wullinger (35), a German who saw the falling man.
Black smoke billowed from the upper floors of the glass-sheathed building, located in a cluster of apartment towers under construction on Dubai’s southern outskirts.
One man scaling the outside of the building got stuck on a narrow ledge on the 13th floor and was rescued after balancing on his precarious perch for more than an hour. Rescuers eventually smashed windows to pull him to safety.
Trapped workers waved towels at hovering helicopters or climbed toward the roof on scaffolding. Rescuers could be seen carrying injured workers on stretchers and putting them in ambulances.
Witnesses on the street below said the fire broke out at about 7.30am GMT and burned for at least an hour before fire trucks arrived on the scene.
Attempts by Dubai’s inexperienced emergency services to extinguish the fire and rescue the trapped workers appeared disorganised. A rescue helicopter was unable to land on the building’s roof, and firefighters on the ground took hours to start evacuating workers out from a 10th-storey window, even after most of the smoke had dissipated.
It was not immediately clear why those trapped near the roof were unable to make their way to lower floors.
A hospital official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said up to 25 workers from India, Pakistan and China were being treated for various degrees of smoke inhalation. Most construction workers in the United Arab Emirates are Asians, mainly from the Indian subcontinent.
Dubai Multi Commodities Centre Authority — a state body that owns the building — said an investigation will be carried out into the cause of the ”tragic” incident without giving further details. — Sapa-AP, Reuters