Egypt: National Theater on Fire

It seems that the Egyptians have succeeded in bringing Nero back to life. And the Egyptian Nero has a long list of places to burn. He started with the Egyptian Parliament a few weeks ago, and now it's time for the Egyptian National Theater.

Egyptian blogger El-Hanem wrote here about today's disaster. She said:

شب حريق في صالة العرض بالمسرح القومي بوسط القاهرة مساء اليوم السبت في وقت يسود فيه الهدوء التام مع استعداد المسلمين لتناول طعام الإفطار بعد غروب الشمس.
وقالت مصدر بالإدارة العامة للدفاع المدني والإطفاء إن النيران بدأت في الاشتعال في نحو الخامسة وخمس وثلاثين دقيقة بتوقيت القاهرة وبدأت بستارة المسرح واستمرت نحو ساعتين ولم تؤد إلى وقوع إصابات باستثناء بعض حالات الاختناق المحدودة.
وأضاف أن أكثر من 30 سيارة إطفاء انتقلت إلى المسرح المشتعل الذي يقع في ميدان العتبة حيث توجد الإدارة الرئيسية للحماية المدنية بالعاصمة.
ورجح أن الحريق نتج عن تماس كهربائي تلاه انفجار بعض أجهزة التكييف داخل قاعة المسرح وهو ما أدى إلى انهيار جزء من ديكورات وواجهات المسرح المطلة على ميدان العتبة.

A fire started in the National Theater's Hall in downtown Cairo at 5pm today. The city was calm then as it's the holy month of Ramadan now and Muslims here were getting ready for breaking their fast.
Sources at the Fire Fighting department said that the fire started at 5.35pm Cairo local time, when the theater's curtains burned and lasted for about two hours. Fortunately, there were no victims there except for some minor injuries due to smoke inhalation. More than 35 trucks moved to the burning theater located in El Attaba square, which is by the way where the Cairo Fire Fighting department headquarters is located.
The fire was most probably due to an electric spark, followed by an explosion in one of the theater's air conditioning systems, which in turn destroyed parts of the theater's decorations.

Join the conversation

Authors, please log in »

Guidelines

  • All comments are reviewed by a moderator. Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
  • Please treat others with respect. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.