Fire razes 120 homes in North Sumatra
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.