Karet Tengsin fire leaves 1,318 people homeless
Karet Tengsin fire leaves 1,318 people homeless
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Nurhadi, 43, had just cooked ketupat ( rice steamed in coconut
leaves) when a huge fire engulfed his wooden house and another
274 houses in Karet Tengsin area, Central Jakarta.
Nurhadi, the ketupat sayur vendor, lost almost all of his
belongings, the just-cooked ketupat, a push cart, and his house
in which he, his father and six brothers and sisters lived, in
the fire on Saturday night.
"I could only save some of my father's and my clothes as the
electricity was cut when the incident occurred. The room was very
dark last night," Nurhadi, the father of four children, told The
Jakarta Post on Sunday.
His children and wife were in their home village in
Pekalongan, Central Java.
The fire which occurred at 9 p.m. on Saturday left 1,318
people homeless. There were no casualties reported.
Dozens of fire trucks and firefighters had difficulty bringing
the blaze under control due to limited access to the location.
They finally managed to extinguish the blaze at about 6 a.m. on
Sunday.
Police are still investigating the cause of the fire but some
residents said it was caused by a short circuit while others said
it was caused by an explosion of a kerosene stove.
Meanwhile, most of the fire victims are being sheltered in a
number of tents erected on a field in Karet Tengsin community
unit 5 (RW5), a place where majority of the victims gathered to
watch an outdoor movie on a large screen when the fire began.
Other people were sheltered at Bendungan Hilir's military
command, mosques, neighbors' houses, and houses of relatives.
For the victims, this was the fourth such incident in recent
years to occur in the densely-populated area.
Mochtar, one of the residents of Karet Tengsin said that the
first fire occurred in 1992, the second in 1997 and the third in
February this year.
Governor Sutiyoso, who visited the scene on Sunday, asked the
victims not to rebuild their houses and offered to build low-cost
apartments at the location.
But, many residents were still reluctant to allow the
administration to build a low-cost apartment on their land,
saying that they wanted to rebuild their houses.
"I cannot make a make decision yet about the offer, but for
the time being, it would be best if we are allowed to rebuild our
houses here," said Abdullah Muhammad, while cleaning up debris
amid the charred rubble where his house once stood.
Karet Tengsin is one of 53 fire-prone subdistricts among 267
subdistricts in the city which has only 900 fire hydrants, far
from the ideal of 20,000 hydrants.
Despite the dismal number of hydrants in Jakarta, the City
Council is currently proposing to cut the budget for the Jakarta
Fire Department from Rp 211,555 billion (US$24 million) to Rp
184,33 billion.