About 60 shops burn to ashes at the Customs Market
JUBA: SOUTH SUDAN: At least 60 shops and stores have burnt Monday at the Customs Market in Juba, according to Police.
This is the third time a major market has burned in Juba. Last week, the Malakia market also caught fire caused by a gas fire and in late November, the Gudele One market fire killed three people and destroyed several shops.
The police say they are investigating the cause of the Customs market fire. Some of the traders say they lost everything they had stocked for the Christmas season.
Patrick Wani, who sells second clothes, hoes, racks and other agricultural tools at the customs market says his shop was completely destroyed by the fire. He also lost three bells of second-hand clothes he stocked for the Christmas holidays.
“I lost everything in the fire.”
“By the time I got here on a Bodaboda (motorbike), this whole place had burnt already. There’s nothing I rescued from the fire. Nothing at all, even one. I had hoes and bells of new clothes and bells of secondhand clothes that I was yet to open. Some of the new special clothes arrived on Saturday and I did not open them.” Wani explains.
The tools cost Wani about 2,800 US dollars in addition to the money he spent on buying clothes for the holidays. He estimates his total loss at 5,000 dollars.
Trader James Obole lost six new bells of clothes he recently stocked plus four sacks of old stock worth a total of 570,000 South Sudanese Pounds.
“For me I lost like six bells (of second hand clothes) apart from the stock and dead stock.” He said.
Obole buys his bells of clothes at 80,000SSP times six and then you add the dead or running stock amounting to four sacks and one sack has about 150 pieces of clothes which he sells at 1,500 each.
“It’s a lot of money. That money you cannot trace, you cannot get it from somebody (and) you cannot borrow it.” Obole said miserably.
Emmanuel Jada, one of the dealers in the market, says their office also caught fire but they managed to rescue some office equipment before the fire destroyed the rest.
“All those shops and the six stores before our office all got burnt to ashes. It’s only the Darfuri man’s shop that didn’t burn. He managed to empty his shop in time. But our office got consumed.”
“The people helped us rescue two computers, a printer and the tables containing documents and they left the rest of the things to burn.” Jada says, adding they could not remove the other materials from their office without risking their lives in the fire.
Brigadier General James Dak Karlo, deputy spokesperson for the South Sudan National Police Service, estimates about 60 shops were destroyed in the fire.
“The fire started at around six in the evening and it burnt all the shops. Unfortunately, these shops are built with zinc materials and zinc material is favorable to fire. It catches fire easily. If it was built using concrete building (materials), we would have been able to rescue some of the damages. Anyway, nobody has died, it’s only properties that have been destroyed.” Karlo said.
Karlo says the fire brigade could have put out the fire if the shops were not connected to each other leaving little or no space for the fire truck to pass through. He says police are investigating the cause of the fire to determine if it was arson or negligence.
The case has been opened at Mauna police division in collaboration with the civil defense, the fire unit.
“They know how to detect whether the fire started by accident or was an intended act by a malicious person, we will get the findings from them. We have not come up with evidence that it has been done by somebody who had a malicious act but according to some findings it seems there’s negligence.”
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