Flurry of fire calls bugs Civil Defense

Girl schools in Jeddah have started inundating the Civil Defense with calls reporting incidents that are often false alarms following the fatal fire at Baraim Al-Watan girls school in the city last week. The blaze killed three women teachers and injured 46 others. The Civil Defense said some calls reported bad smells at the schools. An elementary girls school in Jeddah was evacuated on Sunday following a technical fault with the alarm system. Spokesman for the Civil Defense in Makkah region Lt. Col. Abdullah Al-Amri said the evacuation was carried out smoothly. Two other schools informed the Civil Defense that there was an electric shortage in the buildings. He said the Civil Defense was informed about the smell of electrical burning at another elementary school for girls, but when they went there they did not notice anything. Al-Amri also said another elementary girls school in the Al-Hamadaniya district in north Jeddah reported the same thing. “Last Saturday the 209th elementary girl school in the Braiman district informed the Civil Defense that it had evacuated its students and teachers after the alarm system went off. When we arrived we found out that the system went off accidentally,” he said. Al-Amri said the school was able to evacuate the students as a precautionary measure and added that fire-fighting units remained in the school to ensure the safety of students at the end of the day. “All these incidents have caused a huge nuisance to the Civil Defense and might delay the arrival of fire-fighting units when genuine emergencies occur,” he warned. A number of female teachers told Arab News they begin to panic if they smell anything remotely like burning after the incident at Baraim Al-Watan school. “We do not want to face the same fate of the three teachers who died in that fire,” one of them said. Nadra Muhammad, a schoolteacher, said since the fire at the school she began to imagine the smell of burning wires even though the school was housed in a government building that was safe and secure. “I do not want to die in a fire and do not want my students to sustain any injuries,” she said. Faiza Al-Siraihi, another schoolteacher, called for appointing women safety supervisors in all schools who would be specialized in safety measures and firefighting. “These supervisors will not have anything else to do except following up on maintenance work and carefully monitoring all electricity wiring,” she said. Al-Siraihi said the supervisors should make sure that fire-fighting equipment is available and that all the emergency exits are open and easily accessible. Director of Civil Defense in Jeddah Brig. Abdullah Jiddawi said they took any reports about fires or emergency situations seriously.