Blaze destroys tonnes of food

Onion and potato traders at Dubai's Al Aweer market estimate they have lost millions after fire tears through wholesale storehouses.

A firefighter surveys the damage in yesterday's market that gutted 24 shops.

DUBAI // Tonnes of onions and potatoes worth millions of dirhams were destroyed yesterday in a blaze that ripped through a warehouse at a food and vegetable market. No injuries were reported. Twenty-four of 48 shops in the onion storage unit of Al Aweer market off Emirates Road were gutted, and several lorries parked near the warehouse were destroyed. The shops belonged to wholesale traders.

"I am shocked," said Haji Asif, manager of City Home Foodstuff Trading, whose onion storehouse was destroyed. "We had cash and even passports of our staff inside the facility. It is all gone now. I can put my loss at around one million dirhams." The fire broke out about 11am in one of several similar produce warehouses in the market. While shocked labourers fled the blaze, motorists on Emirates Road stopped to watch the smoke rising in the distance.

Firefighters from three stations responded to the blaze, some arriving within minutes, and contained it in an hour, said Col Ahmed al Sayegh, assistant director general for fire and rescue at Dubai Civil Defence. "The nylon plastic bags used as sacks caused the spread of the fire," he said. Mukhtar Alam, a labourer from Pakistan, described the experience. "There were many of us inside the warehouse when the fire started," he said. "I was in a shop in the back and was late to realise that the warehouse was burning.

"The smoke started filling the shop, and I barely managed to escape. I left everything and ran out to save my life." Aziz Khan, a labourer, was at work in a neighbouring warehouse when the fire began. "The smoke was blowing towards the other warehouses, and the officials asked us to move out immediately," he said. Police and civil defence officials closed all roads serving the area and evacuated neighbouring food storage units.

Khalifa Hareb, director of the assets management department of Dubai Municipality, which is responsible for the market, said the fire damage was being assessed and a report would be released soon. He insisted that the losses would not significantly affect food supply in the emirate. "There will be no shortage due to this," he said. "However, we do not know how much has been lost yet." Traders also maintained that because there are other vegetable warehouses in Dubai as well as in Sharjah, there was unlikely to be a shortage of the foods destroyed in the fire.

Meanwhile, other traders and workers at the market described their horror at seeing the foodstuff go up in flames. The owners of Mehrajkar Goods and Trading estimated that their storehouse had contained 50 tonnes of onions, all of which was destroyed. "Our storage was in shop number eight, and nothing remains now," said Suhail Mehrajkar, who has been trading from Al Aweer market for the last six years.

"Obviously, it's a big loss, and damages are severe. However, we are hopeful that we will emerge out of this and continue to do business in this market." He said it was too early to estimate his firm's financial losses. "Every day, at least 300 to 400 vehicles carrying onions arrive at this warehouse," said the driver of one of the trucks. "All traders here will definitely face big losses. They were lucky that a lot of vegetables were in the trucks and had not been unloaded into the warehouses yet. That was all saved."