A fire broke out at the headquarters of Indonesia’s Food and Drugs Monitoring Agency (BPOM) in Central Jakarta’s Johar Baru district last night, with authorities now carrying out an investigation into the incident.
“The fire occurred at around 9:30pm Western Indonesia Time (WIB) on the first floor of the western part of F building at the Jakarta BPOM office, where at the time of incident a renovation work on the electrical panels was being carried out,” the statement reads.
Central Jakarta’s Fire and Rescue Service deployed eight fire trucks along with additional nine supporting cars to put out the fire, according to the statement. The fire was extinguished in the early hours of Monday, about three hours after it began.
No fatal casualties were reported from the fire, with BPOM saying that only one room was destroyed and that the incident won’t interfere with the agency’s work.
BPOM has yet to specify the function of the building, but said the cause of fire is still under police investigation. The agency also thanked the fire department and the local police station that “moved quickly” to extinguish the fire and secure the situation around the scene.
Additionally, Central Jakarta’s Fire and Rescue Service head Asril Rizal said that an area of around 200 sqm was engulfed in the fire, with an estimated loss of around IDR600 million (US$41,326). He also suspected that the fire had occurred due to an electrical short circuit.
In August 2020, a massive blaze erupted at the Attorney General’s Office in Central Jakarta at a time when the office was investigating some of the country’s highest profile graft cases, including a bribery case involving a state prosecutor, whose office was destroyed in the fire. Despite the suspicious circumstances of the fire, police ruled out arson and charged construction workers for negligent use of flammable materials that caused the blaze.
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