Fire razes 120 homes in North Sumatra

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan

A fire raced through the Medan Maimoon subdistrict on Monday morning destroying approximately 120 homes, though there were no casualties.

An eyewitness, Lily, said the fire, which is believed to have started in a vacant house owned by a woman identified as Rosita Sembiring, began at about 7:30 a.m.

Lily said truant junior high school and high school students often gathered in the house, which had been vacant for some time, to gamble.

Before the fire began on Monday, she said that she saw a number of students inside the house smoking, making her suspect the fire was caused by one of their cigarette butts.

"When the fire started I saw three (students), apparently from a junior high school and one of whom I recognized as a boy named Yuga, run away from the house toward a bridge in the nearby road," she said.

Lily said local residents tried to put out the fire using water from the nearby Deli river, but were unable to extinguish the fast-moving conflagration.

"The fire grew so big so fast the residents could not put it out," Lily told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Half an hour after the blaze began, some 12 fire trucks arrived in the area, but a narrow road prevented them from getting close to the blaze. All the firefighters were able to do was to spray water on the flames from a distance of some 250 meters.

As residents fled their homes, a number of looters moved into the area to rob the vacated houses. Local residents caught a number of the looters and were only stopped from burning them to death by the local police.

The residents almost turned their wrath on Medan Baru Police chief Adj. Comr. Wira when they were stopped from executing the looters.

The Hamdan subdistrict head, Nurlie, said those who lost their homes in the fire would be temporarily accommodated in several nearby locations, including the Balai Keselamatan Orphanage, schools and mosques.

He said the fire caused material losses of hundreds of million of rupiah, but the local administration had promised to help the victims rebuild their lives.