Warehouse blast injures a passerby in Sharjah
sharjah — An Indian man received serious injuries during an explosion that occurred on Monday afternoon in a scrap and rubber warehouse in Sharjah’s industrial area number 10.
The police said that the worker, identified as 34-year-old Mohammed M., received serious injuries to his skull from the shrapnel of an exploding gas cylinder, while he was just metres away from the site. He was rushed by the National Ambulance to the hospital and is in the ICU. He was not an employee of the affected warehouse, but arrived n the area to do business at a company nearby at the time of the accident, which happened around 12.30pm. Sharjah Police patrols arrived and cordoned off the site to evacuate other warehouses in the area to ensure safety.
Colonel Sami Al Naqbi, director-general of the Sharjah Civil Defence, said they received the emergency call at the newlylaunched joint operations room, which dispatched firefighting teams from the industrial area and Samnan fire stations. Rushing to the site in under three minutes, the crew managed to control the fire in three hours and prevented the flames from spreading to nearby warehouses. They then commenced cooling operations to allow forensic experts to investigate the site to ascertain the cause of the blaze. The firefighters started cooling operations at 3.30pm.
Colonel Al Naqbi added that the stock of flammable materials like rubber, tyres, petrol, chemicals, gas, metal and scraps in the warehouse produced thick smoke plumes that engulfed the area.