Another fire happened in the capital city today, Friday (4/25). As many as three houses and a shop-house occupied by a printing store on Jalan Raya Kemuning, RT 06/06, Pejaten Timur, South Jakarta, were burned at around 1.30 PM. Luckily, there are no fatalities and injured victims in this incident. However, the loss is estimated to reach hundreds of millions rupiah. The cause of fire was allegedly electricity short-circuit.

We deployed 17 fire trucks, controlled the fire in approximately 1.5 hours, and are cooling the scene now

“At 1.30 PM, we saw a thick smoke and fire burned immediately. It was coming from the second floor of the house behind the In Jaya store owned by Haji Iskandar. The fire quickly enlarged and spread to a shop-house occupied by the printing store where there were many paint and thinner. There had been small explosion. We were so scared because the fire spread to three houses and the printing store,” said Tuti (37), a local.

Residents and the printing store owner were frantically trying to take out stuffs from the burned buildings. As a result, several printing machines and motorcycles belong to the residents were successfully saved.

Five minutes after firefighters from South Jakarta Fire and Disaster Handling Sub-Department arrived at the scene, the fire was successfully localized to prevent it from spreading to other buildings. Fire localization was conducted because there were many flammable materials. And two hours afterwards, the fire was finally extinguished.

“ We deployed 17 fire trucks, controlled the fire in approximately 1.5 hours, and are cooling the scene now, ” stated Head of South Jakarta Fire and Disaster Handling Sub-Department, Ipung Manik.

According to Manik, the long duration of fire extinguishing is because there were many combustible materials, such as wood beams, boards, paint, and thinner.

“Wood beams and boards were stacked, so the fire was huge inside the building and difficult to be extinguished. Moreover, there were also paint and thinner, that’s why the fire had enlarged. To extinguish it, we had to use special liquid foam,” he uttered.