Elderly disabled woman dies in fire

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A 72-year-old woman was killed in a raging fire that gutted 139 houses on Jl. Muara Bahari in Sunter Agung, North Jakarta, on Tuesday at around 12:30 p.m., making more than 800 people homeless.

Eyewitnesses said that the blind and paralyzed Suji was trapped inside her house when fire started to sweep through the neighborhood.

Thirty-one fire trucks from North Jakarta, Central Jakarta, East Jakarta and West Jakarta Fire Departments were deployed to put out the fire. The firefighters were finally able to douse the flames after more than three hours.

"The neighborhood was densely populated while most of the houses were semipermanent, made of wooden planks," said one of the firemen, Slamet. "Moreover, the wind was blowing quite hard making efforts to extinguish the fire more difficult."

According to the fireman, the fire started from a kerosene stove that exploded in one of the houses.

The fire was the second biggest fire in terms of the number of houses destroyed this year.

In January, around 300 houses in a densely-populated area in Jelambar, West Jakarta, burned down.

There have been at least six fires this year, including the fires at Ora et Labora School in Menteng, Central Jakarta; a printing company Heidelberg on Jl. MT Haryono, East Jakarta and Trans TV studio on Jl. Kapt Tendean, South Jakarta.