Sharjah: Short circuits, cigarette butts, random storage and poor electrical connections were the major causes of fires that took place in Sharjah last year, with one incident even killing a mother and a her daughter, said a senior police official.
Colonel Adel Al Mazmi, a fire expert at Sharjah Police forensics laboratory, urged families to use good quality electrical connections and not rely on faulty parts or overload in case an increase in temperature results in combustion.
He also called on people, especially in residential buildings, factories and commercial places, not to throw lit cigarette butts and to correctly store items that could cause fires.
Overloaded air conditioning units were also a common cause.
Al Mazmi used recent examples to prove his point, including the case of a fire in a 43-floor residential building in Al Majaz where someone threw a cigarette butt from the upper floor that fell on a balcony below and ignited randomly stored materials resulting in a blaze that swept up from the fifth floor to the 10th.
Other examples quoted involved fires caused due to sparks during welding, gas leaks, chemical self ignition and electrical defects, including one inside a child’s scooter.
