Around 3:15 PM I was heading back to the office from Shuwaikh when I spotted a fire in the distance. As I got closer I realized it was in Souk Mubarakiya, so I parked my car behind the old Central Bank of Kuwait building and walked over to where the fire was. The scene was pretty unreal when I got there since it was mostly business as usual. Like you can see the HUGE smoke rising in the background a couple of alleyways down, but everyone was pretty casual going about their day like it wasn’t a big deal.
Once I got to the alley closer to the fire, things were completely different. The fire was pretty loud with lots of pops and bangs, and there was the sound of glass breaking everywhere. You can also feel the heat of the flames from where I was standing which was at the main entrance to the alleyway that has Shamam and the fish market on the right, the bukhour, and the fragrance market on the left. The left side was on fire at that point but the fire was creeping towards the Shamam side via the roof.
View from Shamam
The firefighters were still not on this side of the market and there was a huge amount of onlookers as well as regular folks who were trying to put the fire out themselves with water hoses and extinguishers. Lots of food shops had moved their gas cylinders into an open square along with wooden benches and seating that I guess were from one of the tea shops.
By the time I left around 6:30 PM, the police had shut down the area and had forced people out of the market. I don’t know why it took them so long to close the market, it might be because they were initially understaffed, but by 6:30 there were hundreds of police and firefighters on the scene and I even saw firetrucks from the National Guard arriving.
I was sharing everything live on my Instagram account so if you want to see the videos and photos I took, I’ve created a temporary highlight on @mark248am
