Sohar Aluminium provides assistance to Steel Mill Fire.....

This is a story where a nearby plant asked for assistance when a fire broke out. Sohar Aluminium responded with assistance. The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog commends Sohar Aluminium in responding to call and providing fire extinguishers to assist in suppressing this large fire.

Fire fighters battled for nearly 21 hours to control a major blaze that broke out at Sohar Steel, a steel melt shop in Sohar industrial area on Thursday evening. No casualties were reported. 

The fire that began at around 6.45pm on Thursday, May 3 was controlled and the area cooled down by 3.45pm Friday.

As many as 80 Public Authority for Civil Defence and Ambulances (PACDA) personnel, three large fire tenders, three 10,000lt water tankers and 13 small PACDA vehicles were pressed into service apart from Special Tasks Police Command officials, fire extinguishers from Sohar Aluminium, Oman Oil Refineries and Petrochemicals Company and a urea plant from the Sohar industrial area. Nine water tankers from the Royal Army of Oman also joined the efforts. The fire erupted in the steel, plastic and oil scrap at the factory, which is the backward integration of the Sharq Sohar Steel Rolling Mills.

In a media statement, Ismail Karam al Balushi, director of civil defence in North Batinah said, “Fire fighting teams managed to control the fire despite large quantities of inflammable material. It was found that gas cylinders and oil barrels were causing the fire to spread.” Ahmed al Hosni, PACDA’s public relations officer, said a fire investigation team, accompanied by ROP officials, will look at the cause.”

Even though this incident occurred at a steel mill, our industry can learn from this instance. In terms of proper storage of gas cylinders and oil barrels. The APSB has posted incidents where improper storage of gas cylinders were a source of fuel in a fire. Congratulations to Sohar on providing assistance.

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