Hundreds of firefighters risked their lives to extinguish the fire that gutted the main building of the Attorney General\'s Office (AGO) in South Jakarta on Saturday (22/8/2020).
Ruined office furniture fills the gutted Sasana Andrawina Hall, which stored employee records that have now “vanished”, in the main building of the Attorney General’s Office in South Jakarta, Sunday (27/9/2020). Fire broke out at the building on 22 Aug. 2020.
Hundreds of firefighters risked their lives to extinguish the fire that gutted the main building of the Attorney General\'s Office (AGO) in South Jakarta on Saturday (22/8/2020).
The firefighting efforts were strenuous because of the large conflagration and the limited supply of water. After 11 hours of fighting the dangerous flames and thick smoke, the firefighters were finally able to extinguish the fire.
At around 7 o’clock on the evening of Saturday, 22 Aug. 2020, a man wearing the uniform of an on-demand ojek (motorcycle taxi) driver reportedly stopped by the Kebayoran Baru Sector II Fire Station in South Jakarta. Without identifying himself or providing any details of the incident, he said, “Sir, there is a fire at the Attorney General\'s Office!"
The man’s identity was unimportant to the on-duty firefighters that evening. A total of 10 firefighters from Platoon B of the Kebayoran Baru Sector II Fire Station rushed to the AGO to verify the information. Within 10 minutes, the team had arrived at the site of the reported fire, located about 1.7 kilometers from the fire station.
Upon arrival, they saw that the fire had burned almost the entire north side of the main building in the AGO compound. The firefighters were prevented from entering the structure because of the thick, billowing smoke.
"[The flames] were perpendicular. [All floors] From the sixth floor to the ground floor were engulfed by the fire. The fire seemed to have started on the north side,” Platoon B head Dedy said on Monday (21/9) at the Kebayoran Baru Sector II Fire Station.
KOMPAS/KURNIA YUNITA RAHAYU
Soot covers the southern face of the main building at the Attorney General’s Office in South Jakarta on Sunday (27/9/2020). The damage to the southern face of the building was minor compared to the northern face, where the fire first broke out. On the third floor of the building’s southern face was the office of Pinangki Sirna Malasari, a former prosecutor who is now on trial for bribery and in aiding and abetting Bank Bali graft convict Joko Tjandra in evading justice.
In less than 10 minutes, the hoses of two fire engines had been positioned to spray the lower floors of the building’s north side. They also contacted on-duty firefighters at the South Jakarta Fire Station while attaching the hoses to a fire hydrant at a separate location.
Luckily, the South Jakarta firefighters came immediately. According to radio communications, at least 40 fire trucks and 240 firefighters fought to extinguish the fire at the AGO that night. They fought the flames for around 11 hours until the fire had been completely extinguished by 6:30 a.m. on Sunday.
Cooling
The fire that gutted the building was not just difficult to put out, but the firefighters also faced difficulties in cooling the enclosed space.
"It was difficult to cool down because the temperature was still high. The fire was still burning. The fire was [burning] in the cupboard, on the shelves. If we did not put it out completely, [the flames] would reignite,” said Platoon C head Agus of the Kebayoran Baru Fire Station.
Agus and 10 members of Platoon C came on duty at 8 a.m. on Sunday (23/8). For 24 hours, they worked to cool the south side of the building. The platoon was still able to enter the burning structure because the police had not started their investigation into the fire.
There, the firefighting platoon saw the remains of tables, chairs and cabinets that had been destroyed in the fire. They also saw stacks of burned paper. Flammable objects can reignite at any time after a fire if there is a trigger.
"At that night (around 10 p.m.), flames erupted again in two locations, namely on the ground floor and the sixth floor on the north side," said Agus.
Kompas/Heru Sri Kumoro
Police Headquarters Forensic and Laboratory Officers prepare to enter the main building of the Attorney General\'s Office, Jakarta, which caught fire, Sunday (23/8/2020). The officer will examine and investigate the cause of the fire that occurred on Saturday (22/8/2020) night.
Apart from paper and wood, a number of safes were also located. However, their contents were unknown because the fire department was not authorized to open them. Office equipment damaged by the fire, such as desks, chairs and paper, were also lying around.
The main building of the AGO that was gutted by the fire contained several rooms, including the Sasana Andrawina Hall on the first floor, which was also used to store archival documents, the branch offices of Bank Mandiri and Bank BRI, and a digital archives room. On the second floor were the offices of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general. The third floor contained the offices of the junior attorney general for intelligence and planning, while the fourth contained the offices of the directors under the intelligence junior attorney general. On the fifth floor were the offices of the junior attorney general for development and his subordinates, while the sixth floor contained the human resources department and a conference hall.
Hari Setiyono, the head of the AGO legal information center, said that the main building that caught fire was currently being cleaned. The officials and employees who had lost their offices to the fire had been temporarily moved to the education and training building of the AGO compound in Ragunan, South Jakarta.
The AGO confirmed that no documents related to ongoing corruption cases had been destroyed by the fire. Some of the documents that had been destroyed were human resources files that had electronic backup copies.
The AGO confirmed that no documents related to ongoing corruption cases had been destroyed by the fire.
Not the first fire
The fire was not the first to strike razed the main building of the AGO compound. Kompas reported a similar fire that gutted the right wing of the building on 9 Jan. 1979, only two years after the building was completed. The fire razed the second, third, fourth and fifth floors that contained meeting rooms as well as the offices of the intelligence, operations and planning bureaus (Kompas, 10/1/1979).
A short circuit was identified as the primary cause of the 1979 fire. It took as many as 29 fire trucks and around 2.5 hours to extinguish the fire. Law enforcement are still investigating the cause of the August 2020 fire that destroyed the main building of the AGO compound.
However, the incident provided valuable experience for firefighters. Dedy said that he had been involved in putting out thousands of fires in the city over his 30-year career as a South Jakarta firefighter. However, last month’s fire at the AGO was the largest fire he had been involved in fighting, involving not only the largest number of firefighters but also the longest time to bring under control.
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