49 Killed in Fire at Kuwait Building Housing Workers
- VIVA.co.id/Natania Longdong
Kuwait – At least 49 people were killed and dozens of others injured in the Persian Gulf country of Kuwait, the state news agency said, when a fire broke out on Wednesday (June 12) in a building that housed scores of low-income workers, many of them Indian nationals.
The fire began during the morning in a coastal area called Mangaf, about half an hour’s drive from the center of the capital, Kuwait City.
The Kuwaiti authorities have held the building owner for questioning as they investigate the cause of the fire and try to determine whether any shortcoming or neglect played a role, the state news agency reported.
The authorities promised to begin a campaign to tackle building code violations. The public prosecutor’s office also planned to inspect the site and interview survivors.
Speaking to journalists at the site of the fire, Sheikh Fahad Yusuf Al Sabah, Kuwait’s deputy prime minister and interior minister blamed “the greed of property owners” for the disaster and said that the owner of the company employing the workers would also be detained, as reported from the New York Times site.
Ilustrasi pemadam kebakaran.
- Pixabay.
Jayashankar, an Indian salesman who survived the fire, said that he awoke to screams around 4 a.m. local time. He and his roommates opened the door to their fourth-floor apartment and found that thick black smoke had enveloped the corridor, burning their lungs, he said in a phone interview, asking to be identified by his first name only for fear of retribution.
Instead of trying to escape, he said, they locked the door, opened a window and waited for help. Two of his roommates who left the apartment to find an exit later died, he said.
Witnesses told local news outlets that the fire had begun at the bottom of the seven-story building, sending smoke billowing upward. In a televised interview, an official in Kuwait’s firefighting force, Col.
“In a building like this, you’re supposed to go up to the roof, but unfortunately the door to the roof was locked," said Sayed Hassan Al-Moussawi.
Ramesh, an Indian worker who lives in a building next door and who also asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of retribution, said in an interview that he saw people trying to jump out of windows to escape.
The fire’s high death toll highlighted the perils faced by low-income immigrants to Gulf countries, who often toil under exploitative contracts and live in overcrowded housing, with regulatory protections that are limited or poorly enforced.
Foreigners make up about two-thirds of the population of Kuwait, an oil-rich nation with one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds.
Many are low-paid workers from South Asian countries who perform jobs including construction, restaurant service and street cleaning.
More than 50 people hurt during the fire were sent to hospitals around Kuwait, with injuries including burns, broken bones from jumping out of the building and carbon monoxide poisoning from smoke inhalation, the Ministry of Health said in a statement. Nine were in critical condition, it said.
Many of the workers affected were from India, the country’s embassy in Kuwait said on social media.
On Wednesday, India’s ambassador to Kuwait, Adarsh Swaika, visited several hospitals where workers were taken, the embassy said in its posts.
