Mystery fire engulfs students’ cars in Jeddah

By Mohammed Al-Kinani

JEDDAH – Mystery surrounds the causes of a fire which engulfed seven cars belonging to students at a school in the Al-Andalus District.

Qussay Ahmad was one of the students who lost his car in the fire. Other students were more fortunate. They managed to save their cars as they rushed out of the school at around 10.55 A.M. to the neighboring parking lot.

The lot can park as many as 50 cars. No one was injured in the incident but questions have now been raised about the possible causes of the fire, including rumors that it is linked to disputes among students.

Concerns have also been raised about the school’s accessibility to firefighters. Ahmad, a 10th grader, said he does not have any problems with any of his schoolmates. “Thank God, I and my schoolmates are safe,” he said.

Dr. Saleh Sarhan, the school’s principal, said that the possibility exists that this could be arson. He said that some students told him they had seen three students climbing the wall into the school. “This may indicate they are involved, but we should wait for a report from the Civil Defense investigators,” he said.

Sarhan added that one of the destroyed cars belongs to a student who had been assigned to organize the movement of students inside the school. However, he did not think that this created any hostility toward this student, he said.

Sarhan said that when he first heard of the fire, he immediately called the fire service and gave permission to open the main gate, so that other students could move their cars away. “We waited for more than 15 minutes for the firefighters to arrive to put out the fires that ruined those five cars,” he said.

Mohammed Saeed Al-Ghamdi, a lieutenant from the Civil Defense Department, who was present at the site, said that it was noticed that the front glass of one of the cars looked like it had been broken by a stone. “Investigations will tell everything later. They will also determine the angle of the stone that was thrown,” he added.

However, he emphasized that people could only speculate about the cause of the blaze at this stage. Investigators would determine the cause of the fire. “The three students who skipped their classes will be investigated.
They can perhaps lead us to the right conclusions,” he added.

With more than 700 students, the school is surrounded by villas, palaces and consulates. It is two hundred meters away from the King Fahd General Hospital, which is filled with cars. This makes the area difficult for firefighters to reach.