CAIRO: Three shops burnt down in Cairo’s Wekalet El Balah market in Boulaq, injuring two police officers and one young man.
Sources in the area said that the fire started at 6:15 am on Tuesday and within 25 minutes it engulfed a motorcycle repair shop, a coffee shop and a nearby textile factory.
A 25-year-old man who was sleeping inside the factory was rescued and rushed to Boulaq Hospital to be treated for serious burns.
In an attempt to salvage some merchandise from the textile factory on the second floor, two police officers were seriously injured when the blazing floor collapsed, according to one of the managers Mamdouh El-Shimi.
Witness accounts vary on the exact sequence of events. According to one of the workers Mohamed Hisham, fire trucks arrived at the scene an hour and a half after the fire broke out.
“The fire truck took an hour and a half to arrive here, said Hisham. “The first fire truck to arrive looked like a toktok [a small three-wheel automobile].
Hisham, a middle-aged man with a thin whitening beard, said that he was the first one to arrive on the scene. He said that the sight of the fire terrified him.
“The fire started at several places at the same time, not just one, he continued, “first upstairs then it worked its way downwards.
“It was like hell, he said, pointing to the incinerated wooden doors at the back of the motorcycle shop.
Witnesses say that some people managed to salvage two to four butane gas canisters.
“This whole area would have exploded if they had not recovered the canisters, they said.
The scorched shops were a mix of ash, burnt motorcycle parts and broken pieces of glass. All that remained of the coffee shop was a charred counter and three shisha pipes, as well as broken pieces of wood that once made up the coffee tables, central to the area’s social life.
Coffee shop owner Hamdy El-Shimi paced the remains of what was once his main source of income. “We have paid up to LE 170,000 in taxes since 2005 for these shops.
Whether it was sabotage is still unclear, but the police is investigation is ongoing. The owners claim that an electrical wiring glitch may have caused the fire.
“We replace the wiring every year, so it can’t be because of old wires, said El-Shimi.
One of workers added that electricians had recently visited the shop for maintenance, but some of them question their competence.
Some accounts claim that the fire may have started upstairs in the textile factory.
Two of the shops are owned by the El-Shimi family but the textile factory is owned by someone who lives in the area.
