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Major fire at China Emporium building in Durban; people trapped, several injured rescued
A major fire broke out at the China Emporium building in in Durban on 21 January 2022. eThekwini Fire and Emergency Services regional commander, Zibuse Ngcece, said, “The seven storey building fire made up of various shops, two floors of car park, warehouses/storages and residential flats. We were dispatched for this call at 10h31 and it took us about three minutes to arrive at the incident. We found some of the occupants using fire hose reels as ropes to escape the building billowing smoke. Brigade pitched ladders against the building and the ladders were used as escape routes. We were told that the fire started about an hour ago.”
Regional commander Ngcece added, “Our response included two rescue pumps (RPs) and a command vehicle (CV) from Central Fire Station, rescue pumps from Congella, Westville, Durban North fire stations respectively, water carriers (WC) from Chatsworth, uMlazi and Tongaat fire stations, a hydraulic platform (HP) from uMhlanga Fire Station, a foam tender (FT), breathing apparatus tender (BAT) both from Verulam Fire Station and a chemical incident unit (CIU) from Jacobs Fire Station. We had Acting Division Commander Sifiso Mtshali, five station commanders and 28 fire fighters on scene.” “Operations objectives were to evacuate the occupants out of the building ASAP whilst we are also trying to locate the seat of the fire. We managed to rescue the occupants using our ladders and HP. China Mall Command and simplex radio for fire ground communication were established radio simplex for fire ground communication was also established. ADC Mtshali was the incident commander. Two hand-held lines were deployed for our internal attack lines, HP and FT were also deployed as our aerial attack on the west side of the building where flames were also visible through very small windows.” “The internal fire fighting crew did locate the seat of the fire on the ground floor. They reported massive fireload inside a storage area, stacking was ceiling high in short the housekeeping was terrible bad for fire fighting operations. The internal escalators collapsed meaning that the building itself was getting compromised and fire fighting crews then started to use the ramp to get to upper floors. This ramp was for parking lot inside the building (second and third floor) and the ramp also got compromised as concrete and steelwork or concrete reinforcement that was supposed to hold the concrete together was falling on our fire fighters. We then took a decision to withdraw our internal fire fighting team and commenced the external/defensive attack. There was a time where we thought the fire was under control; however, it ‘jumped’ two floors (second and third) fire was reported on the fourth floor. Our fire fighting crew efforts to get to this floor was unsuccessful due to the reasons mentioned previously (building being compromised).” “Multiple cylinders were observed by crews on the third floor. The heat intensity was also reported to be unbearable. I suspected the heat intensity might have resulted in some of these cylinders exploding after a while; loud bangs were heard inside the building, brigade could not find a fire spread pattern that resulted in the fire reaching the fourth floor. When the building manager was asked about these cylinders he denied them or any hazmat substances/materials inside the structure. It was reported by internal crews on the ground floor they suspected flammable liquids were also stored inside the storage room by observing how the fire was behaving when water was being applied to extinguish.” “According to our own fire safety records, China Emporium was not registered to store any hazmat related material if there was such material it means it was being stored illegally so. We are not too sure if there was hazmat related material irrespective of what was observed by our fire fighting crews.” “The keys to the emergency escape double doors were retrieved from manager after 16h00 and brigade went up to the fourth floor to open the double door after brigade failed to open the doors using forcible entry tools including the jaws of life, where brigade was successful, they were met with another door that required the same time and effort under smoke logged conditions. . The plan was crews make their way to the fourth floor and extinguish the fire there. However this was not guaranteed to yield results due to amount of heat trapped inside this building had compromised the structural integrity and stability of the building as cracks started appearing at 17h45, the amount of heat given off the fourth floor was intense and after a while, flames started appearing and popping sounds of minor explosions were heard inside the parking lot and the factory/warehouse/shop was reported. The brigade's hydraulic platform was the only possible means of attack until internal crews reach the fourth; however, concrete slabs collapse prohibited fire fighting crews. The City structural engineer was requested on scene.” “Challenges included access and egress inside and outside the building; most of the initial efforts were focused on evacuating all the trapped occupants of the building to safe zone. Fire fighters encountered several locked doors throughout the building that prevented escape and access to the building. The structural integrity was in question, especially when smoke was observed issuing through the cracks. Housekeeping inside the building as well as the stacking inside the ground room storeroom was close to the roof. Crews reported that the fire load inside the compartment was massive and is suspected to have caused the intense heat.” “Another challenge was ventilation; the building is like a fortress with burglar guard-like coverings limiting access to the windows, No chimney effect was created inside the building could allow smoke escape upwards, instead, smoke was not being issued by all the floors above the fifth floor, smoke was emitting under pressure on the lower floors. Despite the brigade’s many efforts, smoke and heat could not escape the structure.” “The interference from the crowd and the building residents who wanted members of the brigade to retrieve their belongings or money, also created challenges and the sprinkler system was not activated brigade suspected it was defective or was blocked by the massive stacking.” The positioning and repositioning of the hydraulic platform and foam tender, which happened several times, resulted in progress being lost in many areas due to the time delay setting up these appliances took. We were chasing a moving target, hence we had to reposition these vehicles now and again”. The building was condemned by structural engineer appointed by the China Emporium management. Source: Zibuse Ngcece, regional commander, eThekwini Fire and Emergency Services |
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