Pregnant Woman Among Dead in Horrific Office Fire

Hundreds of personnel and 29 fire trucks were deployed to contain the blaze. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. Many workers in the building, used as a sales and storage office for drone firm PT Terra Drone Indonesia, were at lunch when a battery started sparking in a storage/testing area, said Condro, citing witnesses. The fire was extinguished after three hours of intense effort. At least 22 bodies—seven men and 15 women, including a pregnant woman—were recovered from the building and taken to a hospital in East Jakarta for identification. Resident Intan Puspita, whose home is near the building, says the fire started with a loud bang and workers running outside.
"They said that there was an alleged short circuit in one of the batteries during the charging process," Puspita said. The fire spread quickly, and Puspita said she saw workers on the upper floors trying to escape by moving to the rooftop. "It was tragic," she said. TV reports showed the tense evacuation of more than a dozen trapped workers, including many women, from the sixth floor using an emergency ladder. Authorities said most of the victims died from smoke inhalation. In all, firefighters managed to rescue at least 19 workers, some of whom suffered minor injuries, but they were in a weak and traumatized condition.
A police officer and a firefighter also experienced breathing difficulties. "We will comb through the entire building again," Condro said when asked about the possible rise in the death toll. "Firefighters are cooling down the scene because the smoke is still thick and it is not yet possible for us to enter the structure." Jakarta Gov. Pramono Anung called on company leaders to foster workplace safety culture and to have emergency action plans for evacuation. "This case obviously shows the company [did] not provide 'emergency access' from fire in the direct physical sense," Anung told reporters.