Five Days On, Plastic Warehouse Fire in Cengkareng, West Jakarta Still Not Extinguished
JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - On Saturday (23 May 2026), entering the sixth day, the fire that swept through a plastic warehouse in Jalan Peternakan Raya, Gang Semut, Kapuk, Cengkareng, West Jakarta, is still not fully extinguished.
Since the blaze first broke out on Monday afternoon, 18 May 2026, the firefighting and cooling operations that have continued for more than five days have not managed to put the fire out completely.
The warehouse building, which stood previously, is now levelled with the ground. Although the major fire has been brought under control to prevent spread, hotspots buried in the rubble continue to flare, emitting thick black smoke that spreads to nearby residential areas.
Based on video footage circulating among residents, the incident was also accompanied by alleged explosions, which accelerated the fire and consumed the entire building.
‘Suddenly I saw it become big at one point in the middle; it rose high. We didn’t notice at first; there was no explosion sound, and the explosion only came when the fire had grown,’ Sefti said when approached by Kompas.com at the site, on Friday, 22 May 2026.
Head of Operations of Sudin Fire Control and Rescue (Gulkarmat) West Jakarta, Syaiful Kahfi, said the firefighting team departed at 14:24 Western Indonesia Time, a minute after receiving residents’ reports.
A total of 27 units with 135 personnel have been deployed to the site in shifts since the start.
Although the major fire has been localised so it does not spread, cooling has faced heavy obstacles to date.
‘The difficulty is that the goods are crushed under walls, so we cannot spray water. When it’s buried like this it’s also quite heavy; there are many goods,’ Syaiful said, contacted by telephone.
He added that this condition makes the fire tend to reappear because the water does not reach the heat source inside the pile of plastic material.
‘The pile is large, so we are still dealing with this. The fire is plastic; if we spray water it does not reach the bottom.’
To address this, officers used drones to monitor hotspots hidden behind the rubble.