Blaze destroys large part of auction market area

The market area behind the Male’ garbage disposal area where auction items are kept caught fire around 12:00am this morning.The Police and firefighters arrived at the scene minutes after the fire was reported and began to douse the flames with water. While the firefighters battled the blaze, some civilians at the scene and Policemen tried to save some of the items in the area that hadn’t caught fire yet. Some of the objects removed from the market included gas canisters. Explosions were also heard as the fire roared higher and thick smoke filled the sky. Firefighters pumped seawater from the nearby harbor onto the flames as they struggled to bring the fire under control.By 12:19am the fire had spread to the entire market and the efforts of the firefighters, aided by civilians, seemed not to matter. Many other civilians gathered in the area to watch the scene. Half an hour after the fire had begun, the fire had spread to some parts of the ‘kuni koshi’ (waste disposal area), according to a Haveeru reporter at the scene.By 12:45am the firefighters had broken down the gate to the market area, which is surrounded by a wall of corrugated steel sheets. Loud explosions were still being heard at the heart of the flames.The fire was finally brought under control around 1:45am but isolated fires that continued to burn were finally doused near dawn, around 4:00am. A large part of the auction market had been destroyed by then. The full extent of the damages is not yet known.The new auction market area had been made after the earlier auction centre had been destroyed in a fire on 2 February, 2005. Source: www.haveeru.com.mv