14 people killed, 25,000 homeless in bad fire year

JAKARTA (JP): Fourteen people died, 54 were injured and 25,509 people lost their homes in fires to Dec. 3 this year, city fire department records show.

The 678 fires, an average of two a day, caused Rp 55.3 billion damage. This excludes fires lit during the July 27 riot.

Last year 685 fires killed 13 people and left 7,000 homeless.

Losses from the Senen market fire, which gutted hundreds of shops and offices on Nov. 23, have not yet been calculated said Johny Pangaribuan, the fire department's head of public participation division, yesterday.

"Electricity short circuits were still the main cause of fires, like in previous years," Johny said.

In January, 2,000 homes were destroyed in Penjaringan, North Jakarta leaving 5,000 slum dwellers homeless.

Later that month a fire gutted the National Police Headquarters in South Jakarta. At least three markets in Central and East Jakarta were burned.

Fire struck Penjaringan again in March as seven people died in a fire that hit a two-story house while its occupants slept.

About 20 buildings were set alight in the July 27 riot causing Rp 100 billion damage.

Slow

Johny said firefighters were slow in extinguishing fires on July 27 because they kept their distance from the rioters.

He said many things hindered firefighters efforts to control and fight fires.

One of these was being unaware of changes to a building's design. This included things like changes in partitioning which affected the concentration of people.

Others were changes in electricity loads and department stores building walls to close off alleys; a practice which restricted firefighters' access, Johny said.

Johny said fires would continue if building owners did not heed warnings. None of the city's skyscrapers met fire safety standards as defined in a 1993 city rule, he said.

One building where adjustments were made was the Zodiac discotheque in West Jakarta, Johny said. But he would not say if Zodiac, which has a capacity of 15,000 people, had met all requirements.

He said water scarcity was a problem and would remain so.

There city did not have enough fire hydrants and the situation would get worse as more high rise buildings were built.

Johny said PDAM Jaya, the city-owned water company, could not help because it could barely meet consumers' needs.

The city had only 559 hydrants across 65 hectares but needed 13,000 hydrants, one for every 200 meters.

The city's limitations make a building's facilities the main factor in preventing fire, Johny said.

If traffic remained jammed firefighters would continue to struggle to get to fires in time, he said.

Fire awareness was low so there would probably be many fires next year too, he said.

But he said material losses might be less and victims fewer.

He said this was because several building owners had asked the fire department to check their fire safety systems.

This had happened since 10 department store employees were killed in the 30-hour blaze at Bogor's Kembang market in March, he said.

Bomb threats after the July 27 riot had also enabled the fire department to inform 500 building owners about fire prevention.

State telecommunications company PT Telkom is among the few institutions which had its buildings checked regularly, Johny said.

In 1993 a fire swept the company's East Jakarta facility cutting off 26,000 telephone lines. (anr)