38 Injured In Huge Egypt Fire

At least 38 people have been injured in a huge fire that has ripped through a police complex in Ismailia, in the north of Egypt, to the north east of the capital Cairo.

As per a report from BBC News, 24 people have been treated in hospital for smoke inhalation, whilst another two have been treated for burns.

There has, however, been no reports of casualties whilst there has also been no word on whether there were any detainees in the building when the fire started.

There are fears, meanwhile, that the number of injured, or even killed, could yet grow given the size of the fire, with fifty ambulances attending the scene and also two military aircraft.

Witnesses of the inferno told the Reuters news agency that attending firefighters had initially struggled to get the blaze under control, but after a few hours they managed to get on top of the flames and get them contained.

What caused the Egypt police complex fire?

There are already now calls from authorities to look into the reasons for the fire at the police complex, given the size and nature of the fire, with the interior minister ordering an investigation into the fire’s cause, along with a “structural safety review” of the facility.

Indeed, deadly fires are not uncommon in Egypt due to fire codes rarely being enforced and slow emergency response times. In August last year, a fire caused by a short circuit killed 41 people in a church in Cairo.

It remains to be seen what the result of the investigation into the cause of this fire produces, then, but it is evident from images of the fire and the scale of it that further work needs to be done in the country to try and get on top of, and prevent, such blazes quicker and more effectively.