In the early hours of 9th January 2023 a massive fire broke out in one of the biggest auction houses in Male’, ‘Neelan Fihaara’, causing major damage to the building in addition to burning down a City Council staff accommodation block along with it.
Fire incidents in the Maldives are not unheard of, but in recent days the occurrence of such incidents has become more frequent causing worry among people.
Maldives recently had one of the biggest fire incidents to take place in recent times, when a fire broke out in a staff accommodation building which led to 10 brutal deaths of foreign workers. While this incident was a warning sign that building safety needs to be taken more seriously in the Maldives, it appears that there might be a deep-rooted issue that is surely being ignored as a string of fire incidents broke out causing alarm bells to go off.
The most recent series of fire occurrences began with the G.Dh Fiyori School fire on January 8, 2023, which resulted in the entire school building burning down. The administration is currently required to divide the limited number of 165 students into two sessions in order to accommodate the students due to the terrible effects that the fire left on the school.
And while everyone was trying to recover from this incident, in the early hours of 9th January 2023 a massive fire broke out in one of the biggest auction houses in Male’, ‘Neelan Fihaara’, causing major damage to the building in addition to burning down a City Council staff accommodation block along with it.
There have been reports of a loud explosion at the auction house before the fire, but the cause of the fire's origin is still unknown. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) issued a warning to the public to wear masks and avoid the area because of the significant amount of wood, metal, and plastic, which contributed to the fire's rapid growth and heavy smoke rise. While this fire caused roads to be closed to public traffic and schools in the area to be suspended due to the heavy smoke, this is not the first time Neelan Fihaara has caught on fire.
In addition to these two fires, a third one occurred this year on a landfill in Raa Atoll Alifushi, which compelled the Maldivian Police to finally open an inquiry into the recurrent fires in the Maldives. A forensic team has also been brought in order to help the police with their investigation into the series of fire occurrences and to ascertain whether or not these fire accidents are intentional.
However, one of the first steps that we may still be ignoring when it comes to the cause of fire incidents might be building safety as fire incidents are frequently caused by a lack of safety measures being put in place. Having such frequent and dangerous fires breaking out in such a small country as the Maldives is definitely of concern and needs to be looked into.
