HOUSE OF THE WEEK

A home away from it all in Thanlyin

THIS house in Thanlyin township represents a departure from the hustle and bustle of city life across the Bago River and over the Yangon-Thanlyin bridge. more

Yangon Weather Forecast, Burma

Yangon fire chief ‘proud’ of crews

ONE of the commanders of the Mingalar Market firefighting operation said last week he was “proud” of his fire crews for battling for more than 20 hours to save the lower floors of the building.

U Thin Htay Shwe, acting director of the Yangon Division Fire Services Department, told The Myanmar Times on May 31 that his fire crews worked bravely in the tough conditions, persevering in spite of the smoke, darkness and erratic water supply.

“We blocked the fire at all the stairways and escalators with the water hoses,” he said. “If the front person who was holding the nozzle overheated we poured water on him and we rotated the firemen, one after another. With our perseverance we stopped the fire and we felt proud of ourselves that we could do that and, in the process, save the lower floors.”

“We Myanmar fire crews never back down from a challenge because of alack of resources,” he said. “We fought the fire using the resources we had, using the water we had, using the tools and machines we had. Some questioned why we didn’t use a helicopter. In that kind of fire, a helicopter would not have been effective.”

He also hit out at suggestions the rain stopped the May 24 blaze, or that the fire simply ran out of fuel.
“We fire crews put that fire out,” U Thin Htay Shwe said. “Some people said the fire was extinguished because there was no more fuel. If we [fire crews] had sat back – maybe because of the extreme heat, smoke, tiredness, inadequate facilities or some other reason – the fire would have easily burnt out the whole building.

“I’ve also heard people say the rain stopped the fire. It could not extinguish the fire. The rain fell on the roof and then went down the drainage channels – it didn’t even touch the fire.”

Another fire department official also declared the “very difficult” operation a success and praised public support for fire crews.

“When we managed to break through to the fourth floor of the building, the people watching from outside on the street applauded us. We could hear that, it gave us a lot of energy – more than if we had drunk 100 bottles of energy drink,” the official told The Myanmar Times last week. “And we would really like to say thank you to the public for donating food for us, we relied on that throughout the operation.

“After the fire, many of the fire fighters were suffering from burns and all were extremely tired and sore, their eyes were stinging and red from the smoke and heat. But their spirits were still high because of the appreciation and support of the public.”

The May 24 fire started on the top level of the five-storey building and quickly spread through the top floor and later onto the roof. The work of the fire crews was made more difficult by the heavy aluminium doors that were used to partition the shops, the official said.

“Firstly, our aim was to stop the fire from getting below the fourth floor and then to make it possible to get onto that floor and extinguish the fire from the inside.

“The main difficulties we had to overcome during the operation were the tight steel aluminium partitions of the rooms, the very thick smoke produced by the burning chemicals, the hot, almost burning water inside the building and the passageways that were just about completely blocked by piles of goods,” he said. “These made our operation difficult.”
“But we believe that this was a successful operation – and I think the public shares that view – because we stopped the fire from spreading down onto the lower floors.”

“The main strategy the fire brigade used is called a ‘squeezing’ strategy. We put the fire out from all four sides of the building and we moved to the middle of the building step by step,” he said.

“We used this strategy because this was what we call a ‘closed’ fire. It had no definite direction; the fire was trapped in the shops by the aluminium-plated doors. The fire spread from room to room by means of heat radiation and heat conduction, which happens when the temperature is so hot that an object does not need to be touched by the flame to ignite.

“The heat generated by this fire was three to four times higher than a normal house fire or something like that because it was fuelled by chemicals with a high autoignition temperature (the point at which a substance will spontaneously ignite).”

While many observers believed the roof of the building collapsed or blew out at about 6pm, the official said the explosion was actually chemicals stored on the roof igniting through heat conduction.

The official also refuted claims the fire brigade was slow to act in putting out the fire.

“The people always say that the fire crews arrived late on the scene,” he said. “But the firemen are fourth in the information line. I mean, the first person in the line is the person who spots the fire, followed by their family, colleagues or friends, then the official who takes the call about the fire and finally the crews.”

“The fire actually started at about 7:45am on May 24. We heard some reports of the fire on our radios at about 8:15am but weren’t called out until 8:48am, as it was in the Tarmwe fire station zone,” he said.

“While we try and get there as quick as we can, we also have to be careful to avoid accidents. This can make the situation worse and actually slow down the response.

“And people also initially blamed us for just standing around and not putting out the fire quickly. We would like the public to know the nature of the turntable ladders and water towers. It takes time to erect them because if they are not balanced properly, they can fall down under the weight of the fire crews and water.

“A couple of times we had to re-stabilise the water towers because of the uneven ground. Maybe to observers it would have looked like we mistakenly folded the tower back down while the fire was still going.

“It’s difficult to describe quite how much water we used. I mean, inside the building you could hear the sound of the falling water continuously, it felt like we were at BE [waterfall] in Pyin Oo Lwin. When we’d finished, there was two feet of water on the basement of the market.”

U Thin Htay Shwe said in addition to the 120,000 gallons of water stored under the building, bowsers transported about 4 million gallons to the market from nearby Kandawgyi Lake.

He said Mingalar Market had the best fire prevention standards of any market in Yangon, including underground water storage, fire hydrants and light water pumps. “These measures are a great example for other markets,” he said. “It was only because of the lack of training and fire extinguishing technology that people didn’t use these effectively. Excitement and fear also played a role.”

“The fire was inside a shop; it started before the shop opened. Some shopkeepers tried to put it out with fire extinguishers, which probably would have extinguished the fire, but they could not reach inside the closed shop properly.”

 

Regular section