A fire at a whiskey distillery injured a man trying to extinguish the flames in Northern Yangon’s Thaketa township yesterday, according to an official from the Thaketa Fire Department.
“The fire began when a cat fell on a transformer and destroyed the porcelain bushing insulating the mineral oil used to stabilise and cool the transformer. The oil and the heat started the fire,” a Thaketa Fire Department official told Coconuts Yangon.
The raging inferno was captured on video by an Eleven Media journalist after the fire broke out at the YD distillery next to the new Eleven Media facility in Thaketa township.
Fifty firefighters on three fire trucks and two water containers arrived 10 minutes after the fire started and quickly extinguished the growing flames. The cat, as you may have surmised, did not survive the incident.
Before the firefighters arrived, a man who lived in the neighborhood attempted to extinguish the flames and received burns on his body from mineral oil splashing off from the transformer fire.
“I was burned on my right side from all the hot oil. I didn’t feel anything when it first happened,” U Win Naing told Eleven Media.
Due to the incident, the fire department confirmed that the electricity manager of YD Distillery is being charged with article 285 of the penal code for negligence involving fires.
The mineral oil used in oil-filled transformers and high-voltage capacitors is highly flammable, and can easily start a fire when it leaks.
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