Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Huge Fire


These pictures were taken a few moments ago from the window of my office. A huge explosion occurred around 7am in the industrial area of the city called Al Quoz. We're still waiting to hear exactly what has happened. As I sit typing, the sirens sounding from emergency response crews race up Sheikh Zayed Road toward the fire.

We live about 20km from here and I called Russell to look outside - he and Lyra could see the cloud of black smoke over the city. On the news, they reported it was visible from Ajman, an Emirate about 50km from here.

The cloud is stretching over my office - I'm peering up from under it and wondering what short of toxic fall out I'm being exposed to.
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Traffic seems to be moving along the road. Evidently they haven't decided to divert traffic for the safety of the drivers. That doesn't mean it's not toxic, just that the authorities here would rather have traffic run smoothly than to divert traffic for a health concern that may not materialize as cancer for many years down the road. As you can see, further down, it seems like the cloud is spilling over the road. Yuck!
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Updated to add:.
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I found this picture on the Gulf News website. WOW! Reports are that it started in a warehouse that was illegally storing fireworks and quickly spread to 8 other warehouses in the area. There are no clear reports on exactly what was in the warehouses that were burning. I had earlier heard that one was a paint warehouse.


Updated:

That's 80-100 other warehouses that were affected.

A quote from Gulf News, "The toxic emissions - including sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and phosphorus compounds - will be inhaled by people for days." I think we've exceeded our greenhouse gas emmissions for the decade in this one event. I did feel a bit of dryness and a cough for most of yesterday - not sure if that was psychosomatic or not.

1 comment:

Mamacita said...

Holy cow! That is scary! Be careful!