Panic as PPF Tower floor burns

Send to a friend

Monday, 04 February 2013 10:38

By Frank Aman and Aloyce Mpandana The Citizen Correspondents Dar es Salaam. The 17th floor of the PPF Tower in the city yesterday caught fire, where properties whose value could not be immediately established were destroyed. The skyscraper located at the corner of Ohio Street and Garden Avenue, was built in 1999 by the Parastatal Pensions Fund (PPF). According to acting commissioner general of the Fire and Rescue Brigade, Mr Pius Nyambacha, the cause of the fire was yet to be established and investigations into the incident were still going on. He said, the fire destroyed some items that were in the 17th floor due to the lack of automatic fire detectors. “The building caught fire around 6am. However, we managed to evacuate people and extinguish the fire before it spread to other floors,” he said. Mr Nyambacha said, due to lack of vehicles that could extinguish fire in buildings with the height of more 57 meters, fire fighters were forced to break their way in to kill the blaze. According to PPF director general William Erio, tenants occupying the floor which caught fire yesterday are SevenSeas Shipping Agencies Tanzania and Abbot Fund. Dar es Salaam Special Police Zone Commander, Mr Suleiman Kova, said police would investigate the cause of the fire and report about the loss of properties soon. “It’s hard to know the cause of the fire at the moment,” he said. Dar es Salaam regional commissioner Said Mecky Sadick instructed the Fire Department to inspect all buildings to check whether they met fire safety requirements.