Fire near Burj Dubai Square

These are taken from our office building showing the smoke from a fire in one of the construction sites adjacent to the Burj Dubai. Smoke is billowing across into Burj Dubai Square, sorry new name, Emaar Square.

Where there's smoke....

BurJurman mall was evacuated yesterday afternoon when acrid smoke filled the luxury shopping mall. The smoke, which came from one of the restaurants, filled all 3 shopping floors of the mall and filtered down to the basement parking. The fire brigade was on the scene quickly and dealt with the fire. However, as expected, there was absolutely no organised direction to confused shoppers on where the exits were to leave the building. Don't tell me otherwise in your glossy press releases! Many shoppers and shop workers gathered in the foyer of the office tower which, in a major emergency and evacuation would be a nightmare as they'd be struggling to get into the office fire exits while the office workers were also using to evacuate from the 25 floors of the business tower. On this occasion there was only smoke, but if there'd been flames, panic would have started and it would have been a disaster. After 18 months the office tower management have still not held an organised tenant evacuation drill. The management hands out a pathetic photocopied book (one copy per tenant) that's supposed to be sufficient. After circling body parts in photos of disaster/accident cases as part of my job 'back in the day' at RT&P, I'm highly motivated to ensure that I'm not a casualty and that nobody I work with is either! So with the support of management, I convinced, ok I nagged, everyone in the firm into taking part in our own evacuation drills. At the first evacuation drill we found the fire exit door to the street had been chained shut. The response was "But Madame don't worry, the door is always open between 10 - 5." Well that's good isn't it because everyone knows that fires keep regular hours. Until February this year the company I work for in BJ Tower seemed to be alone in having any sort of structured and practiced evacuation plan. I'm happy to say that now the Aus Consulate and AusTrade are joining us in our 3 monthly jaunts down the fire stairs. Its not perfect by the standards we're used to in NZ/Aus/US/UK but if it gives us a fighting chance in a real emergency, its well worth doing.
There are photos here.

Huge explosion in Dubai

A pall of thick smoke hangs over Dubai after the explosion. Photo taken at 9:10am from BurJuman

A huge explosion at 8am this morning rocked the Al Quoz area of Dubai this morning sending a mushroom cloud of smoke high into the air. Typical Dubai, nobody knows exactly what has happened, some think an electricity substation has blown up, others that its a fireworks factory. One thing's for sure, the pall of black smoke is still growing over Dubai, so *something* out there is still burning. One of my colleagues who lives close by the site of the explosion (near the Al Quoz National Taxi Station behind the old Grand Mall) tells me there are a large number of factories in the area. She says that when the explosion happened the windows rattled and her room shook so much that she thought a car or truck had hit the house. She said that shortly afterwards the Police and fire service were on the scene but that visibility on the roads in the area was minimal as the smoke was so thick. The explosions, and I'm told there was one large initial explosion followed by several smaller blasts, were felt in Jumeirah where windows rattled.