A short while ago fire was reported at the construction site of Avenues Phase 4. Firefighters are currently arriving at the scene, no open flames can be seen from the main road (as of now) but theres lots of smoke.
According on an engineer from the site, the fire is located in the “Forum” area of Avenues Phase 4 which you can see on the map above.
I’ll update this post with more pictures and information as I get them. Hopefully this doesn’t turn into a major fire like last weekend.
update: Looks like the fire was put out before it spread
Thanks Dragos
13 replies on “Avenues Phase 4 Construction Site Catches Fire”
There have been like, weekly huge construction site fires at this point
Well,I can assure you that most of them are due to lack of housekeeping and very weak safety measures implemented. Leaving piles of wooden debris scattered all around the sites, some of them being soaked in flammable compounds, is a disaster waiting to happen, especially in this hot weather.
It’s funny because your comment almost made me LOL. Wood soaked in flammable material? Are you ok? The reason fires like this start can be from something as small as a cigarette thrown on the wrong flammable material by a careless person, all the way to a welding spark flying and landing on a wood catching flame many hours later. More so it seems you OBVIOUSLY never worked in a construction site because it’s impossible to maintain 1,000 plus workers doing hundreds of activities, safety precaussions are taken but accidents always happen, that’s why you have fire extinguishers and temporary fire systems to stop and maintain fires in small areas which is what happened in this project. Next time before you go and say ‘poor housekeeping’ remember that safety personnel along with KFD actually risked their lives to maintain the fire and saved the project. They did an excellent job of crisis management.
That is such a negative attitude. I work for Boeing and they have 150,000 employees. And they have thousands working in the factories with huge/heavy machinery, welding, electricity etc
However, there has only been one factory related accident this year and it was nothing.
Safety precautions can always be improved. Its not impossible to eliminate hazard. Management can always step up their game. Its not ‘always gonna happen’.
Your point is invalid considering Boeing has specific activities in specific places which always remain in the same place, and highly trained individuals unlike the labor found in constrictions sites. However in constructions sites you have all activities moving around which is much harder to control unlike Boeing which most likely has designated spaces for designated activities and parts are moved around rather than people. Just as you mentioned as well you had an accident this year so yes, accidents always happen there is no way around it, no one in perfect.
No accidents don`t just happen. If that`s your theory then no wonder they do happen. You probably work based on the idea that nothing will happen and “ooh shit” look its happening.
That`s why you have safety protocols put in place with extra safety if needed.
Yes it`s hard to control thousands of people but it can be done.
You would not be saying that if you had actual building construction experience. Good day! I said good day!
That was a respose to Blackswanny btw
Definitely my friend you have nothing in common with construction sites/work, especially in Kuwait (God help us all if you do). Let me enlighten you, when you cast concrete the shutter plywood panels are coated with an shutter release agent so the cement paste will not stick to the panel; there are usually two types of such agents, water based ones (non-flammable) and oil/diesel based ones (highly-flammable). Most of contractors in Kuwait prefer the second one (cheaper of course) and some of the contractors prefer to use diesel directly. Now I hope you can imagine what happens after several usage of the same panels, they`ll be quite heavy contaminated with combustible substances and when exposed to heat will catch fire quite easily (not from sun, but from an cigarette but or any other fire source). Hope you learned a little bit more now about safety issues.
I guarantee to you that I have seen more constructions sites around GCC then you worked on.
I have made no reference to the housekeeping in the site of Avenues, I assume you work there being so defensive , but i can take you to dozens of sites , including the one in avenues and show you poor housekeeping. Look up Housekeeping in dictionary, no relation to evacuation of the site. And I was there almost until the end.
I haven`t made any comments towards Safety Teams of KFD, so keep your comments. BTW they did a great job at “containing ” the fire , not “maintaining” the fire.
Very valid point, not sure why the government doesn’t clamp down on this negligence (though routine checks/fines) it’s costing them tons of money and resources to put out these huge fires.
Hahahahahaha. When has the gov’t ever done a good job in routine checks and fining? This is a main problem we have. THIS is a main reason why people think the law here is a joke. We need better, unbiased, professional enforcement. I mean, as an example, even when it comes down to the first layer of law we see daily, traffic police. Any normal person can see that they have alot of what I like to call “selective fines” where the officer fines only what he sees fits. Even when important laws are released like seatbelt, prohibiting phone use, etc, are being neglected. They seem to always wait for “7amlaat” for a specific law. I do not understand why all police don’t fine for breaking all the laws, all the time; that’s what police enforcement is supposed to do. BUT, How can we really expect them to do that when many cop cars we see on the street have two guys, not wearing their seatbelt, smoking a cigarette, and driver is on his phone.
This example can be shared with many gov’t entities: MOH, Municipality, Customs (especially air cargo), and more.
So ofcourse we are all corrupt. We are all living in a place where we need contacts to get daily work done, or not get threatened, or just be able to do our jobs normally. Its now part of who we are. Sad isn’t it?
On another note, there are things here that won’t pass anywhere else. The lack of training that gov’t employees get is unacceptable. Ambulances, for example, do not have advanced cardiac life support (ACLS). ‘First world’ countries have that as a requirement for paramedics (that include paramedics part of the fire dept.), nurses, and ofcourse drs. Here, only drs. are required to have ACLS. This makes the ambulance ride basically a bigger mode of transportation with two employees who are ONLY trained to do CPR and take some vitals. If I need advanced life support on the way to hospital, I’m screwed.
Wrong on “only doctors are required to have ACLS”.
I was with several (i’d dare say mostly) personel from the emergency services dept in Subhan when I had my ACLS training. There were few doctors and nurses from the MOH who participated too.
Sadly, such is the law that ONLY DOCTORS are allowed to give orders. An a typical ACLS scenario, the FIRST person to reach the place of incident determines the needs and gives out the orders. The ” doctor” if he come late, can be relegated to counting and giving out the tempo/rhytmn for CPR.
In kuwait, that’s not the case. We raised this very same issue, and until laws are ammended to protect ACLS responders, nobody will do shit but wait for “doctors” to give out the orders.
Were there any casualities? And will this cause delays in the completion of the project?