Workers evacuated in Viceroy Dubai tower fire
Video: Blaze at under-construction Viceroy Dubai Jumeirah Village takes five hours to subdue
Workers at the under-construction Viceroy Dubai Jumeirah Village tower had to be evacuated from the site following a major fire on Saturday afternoon.
A spokesperson from Dubai Civil Defence told Gulf News that it took firefighters some five hours to bring the blaze under control. No fatalities were reported in the incident, with eyewitnesses saying that construction workers were evacuated through shafts by the Civil Defence.
The fire engulfed the top floors of the building, which is estimated to be worth $326.6 million.
Developed by SKAI Holdings and built by China State Construction Engineering Corporation (Middle East), the Viceroy tower is a distinctively designed, with a 30-degree rotation on each floor. Each floor will have an outdoor pool and a garden, SKAI Real Estate Development told Big Project ME during a site visit in October 2015.
Plans for the 60-storey project include 234 hotel rooms, with 13 suites, and 117 two-bedroom apartments and 104 one-bedroom apartments. There are also 33 larger units with four bedrooms each.
In total, the building will have 45,450sqm of landscaped gardens and a total of 271 swimming pools. The total area of the site is 6,000sqm, while the built up area is 150,000sqm.
Although no official comment has been made from SKAI Holdings or China State about the fire, sources have told Big Project ME that the damage to the tower is relatively minor, with work set to resume as quickly as possible, once the Civil Defence has concluded investigations.
The incident is the latest tower fire in Dubai, following a blaze at the 75-storey Sulafa Tower in the Marina district in July 2016.
Previous fires include a residential building in Ajman in March, the fire at The Address Hotel in Downtown Dubai on New Year’s Eve, and blazes at 79-storey and 34-storey Dubai residential buildings in 2015 and 2012 respectively.
