One of the largest residential sky scrapers in Dubai caught fire early in the morning on 4th of August, sending chunks of debris plummeting below. This is the second time in two years that the building was in the grasp of flames.

More than 40 floors of the 79-storey Torch Tower located in the popular waterfront Marina District, were burning on one side of the building. The traumatized residents could be seen on the street outside crying.

Dubai's Civil Defence announced at about 3.30am that the firefighters had brought the blaze under control and that no injuries had been reported.

According to eye witnesses, the fire was very strong at about 1 a.m. It started to calm down over the period of two hours. Residents claimed that the fire started on the 67th floor. Another resident said that the top part caught fire first and then lower levels followed as the debris fell. (aljazeera.com)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ahoF30_Nlo

Earlier fires in Dubai

The same tower had caught fire in February 2015, but no major casualties were reported then.

Other than this, several skyscrapers in the United Arab Emirates have caught fire in recent years, including a towering inferno that engulfed a 63-storey luxury hotel in Dubai on New Year's Eve in 2016. In that blaze too, residents escaped without major injury. (bangkokpost.com)

Seeing repeated incidents of fire, earlier this year, Dubai had passed new fire safety rules requiring buildings with quick-burning side panelling to replace it with more fire-resistant siding. Authorities previously acknowledged that at least 30,000 buildings across the UAE have cladding or panelling that, according to safety experts accelerate the rapid spread of fires. (bangkokpost.com)