Fire cases worry residents in Muscat

Incidents in Ruwi’s CBD underlined need of safety measures in buildings

MUSCAT: In light of the recent fire incident that happened in one of the residential blocks in the CBD area of Ruwi, residents are now concerned about their safety, especially in buildings that also have offices.

The fire that took place in Ruwi last week had started in the basement of a building, which houses a printing press and an AC installation and electrical repair shop. However, only the latter was affected. When the

spoke to a couple of residents from that building and surrounding apartment blocks, they seemed concerned.

“No such incident happened here before and so we never thought about such a thing, but now that this unfortunate thing has occurred, we are a little concerned. Not like this was never expected, but the area is nice and safe and we are glad that nothing major happened here,” said a resident. Fayaz, another resident from a building next to the one which was affected, said it was scary because if the fire spread, anything could have happened. “Most of the apartments here have offices in them and that is usually not a cause of concern, but I think that places, such as printing presses and technical shops need to be more secure about safety regulations.”

A supervisor at the shop, which was affected, said the fire was thought to have occurred because of a short circuit. “I think it was because of a short circuit; we are still investigating, but it’s a little puzzling because we turn everything off before we leave the office and normally we are not even in the office, we work outside most of the time.

“At the time when the fire started, it was past midnight and no one was in the office, we normally switch off our main gear and all the power is supposed to be off after that, so we are just wondering what might have gone wrong.”