8 Girls injured in Jeddah school fire

Eight girls were injured, two of them seriously, when a fire broke out yesterday at a secondary girls school in the Kilo 14 area of Jeddah. Director of Health in Jeddah Dr. Sami bin Muhammad Badawood told Arab News that the operations room of the Civil Defense alerted the emergency and crises unit at the Health Affairs at 11:52 a.m. about the incident. "We immediately increased the degree of readiness to maximum level at the Al-Thaqr Hospital with a red-label alert. The hospital was the closest to the school," he said. Badawood added that a yellow alert was passed to the King Fahd Hospital and King Abdul Aziz Hospital as backups under the health emergency plan. He said  the ambulances of the Saudi Red Crescent and the Civil Defense rushed four of the injured girls to the hospital while four others were brought by their families. Dr. Muhammad Bajubair, director of the emergency and crises management unit, said only two of the eight girls suffered serious injuries while the six others were slightly injured. He said one girl injured her backbone while the second had a heart attack. "We are providing utmost medical care to these two cases," he added. The fire brought back to the minds the tragedy at Baraim Al-Watan Girls Schools last year in which two female teachers died and 56 others suffered injuries and burns.