Fire ravaged at least 141 houses in RT 01, 02 and 09 RW 10, Kodim 0505/BS Complex, Cililitan Urban Village, Kramatjati Sub-District, East Jakarta, Saturday (9/13). Because of this incident, about 650 families lost their homes.

About 1,000 lives lost their homes. However, thus far, the material loss suffered because of this incident could not be calculated yet

Indra (52), and eyewitness, said the fire was first seen around 3 PM from a house in RT 09/10, and strongly alleged caused by electricity short circuit. Strong wind made the fire quickly spread to other houses which most of them were semi-permanent buildings.

“The buildings here were built since 1950s,” he told.

After East Jakarta Fire and Disaster Handling Sub-Department deployed 25 fire trucks, the fire was finally extinguished two hours later. The process was troubled at first because the fire location is hard to be reached in by fire trucks.

To resolve the problem, some of the fire trucks were had to be parked on the side of Jalan Dewi Sartika and the firemen connected tens of hoses to extinguish the fire, while other fire trucks went back and forth to get water from Ciliwung River.

“About 1,000 lives lost their homes. However, thus far, the material loss suffered because of this incident could not be calculated yet,” stated Head of East Jakarta Fire and Disaster Handling Sub-Department, Abdul Karim.

In this incident, a fireman had fainted when trying to extinguish the fire. Allegedly, he inhaled too much of smoke which made him could not breath. By his colleagues, the fireman was evacuated to a safer place and given rescue breathing using an oxygen tube.

The incident also had made the traffic congested up to two kilometers long on Jalan Dewi Sartika from Kampung Melayu towards Cililitan and vice versa. It happened because of the numerous amount of fire trucks parked on roadside.