Address guests return for their belongings after fire

Dubai: Little Samir flicks through the pages of his school notebook. His handwriting has become illegible on the drenched paper. Beside him, on the curb in front of The Address Downtown Hotel in Dubai, his family’s luggage sits. Samir’s father, Karim, had just come back from their room at the hotel, which caught fire on New Year’s Eve.

“Everything is soaked,” Karim, a Lebanese-engineer based in Dubai, said. “The entire room was flooded with the water it took to douse the fire. The authorities are letting people go in the hotel in batches to reclaim their goods. They are saying the cooling process is done and operations have been handed back to Emaar Properties.”

Pedestrians on the Mohammad Bin Rashid boulevard infallibly raise their phones to take a picture when in sight of the hotel, one side of which has been left charred by Thursday’s fire. Motorists on the boulevard do the same, slowing down when in proximity of the hotel, taking a peak at the aftermath of the fire.

Police have condensed the blockade around the area to the ramp leading up to the hotel. Guests and tenants of the 63 storey-hotel could be seen waiting to go and reclaim their belongings.

An official from Emaar Properties, who was at the scene, said “A tent will be set up as a waiting area for guests before they go to check on their rooms.”

He added that all guests will be escorted to their rooms by the relevant authorities. “As a precautionary measure, we can’t allow anyone to go inside the building unattended.”

According to an official statement, preliminary investigations showed the fire originated on the 20th floor of the hotel. The fire then spread to consume 40 floors.

Though there were no deaths attributed to the fire, police said 15 people had been injured and one man suffered a heart attack during the evacuation process.

In a video on the Dubai Media Office twitter page, Lieutenant Colonel Hussain Al Rahoumi, leader of the Civil Defence task force assigned to the case, said:

“We managed to evacuate all the occupants of the hotel within 20 minutes. It was a brisk and efficient procedure thanks to the cooperation between all the relevant forces.”

In the video, scenes of the hotel’s interior, once regarded as one of the most upscale and luxurious spots in Dubai, can be seen as charred and flooded. Wires hang from the walls and ceiling.

Simon Marouf, a 30-year-old painter from Syria who rented an apartment in the building, said that they had been taken care of and accommodated at the St. Regis Hotel in Dubai.

“We are still waiting for our turn to go to the hotel. Thankfully my apartment was not on the side of the fire, but still we’re expecting to see it flooded, all the electrical appliances are probably irrevocably damaged now. But thankfully, we’ve been taken care of very well by the hotel’s administration.”

Marouf said the hotel was providing its guests with free food and accommodation, even giving cash to some.

“They’ve set us up with rooms and have even doled out money to some of the guests, so they can buy clothes or anything else they might need as many left their wallets and passports in their rooms.”

Marouf was looking forward to a nice evening with his friends, who were visiting from Germany, and his brother and his brother’s fiancée, when the fire broke out.

“My apartment is on the 56th floor, we were unaware of the fire because it was on the other side of the building. Luckily, one of my friends, when she went to the washroom, heard the alarm,” he said.