Firefighters trying to extinguish the blaze that engulfed the upper storey of Glodok Plaza in Taman Sari, West Jakarta, on Jan 15, 2025. - Antara
JAKARTA: A massive fire engulfed one of Jakarta’s oldest malls, Glodok Plaza, in Taman Sari, West Jakarta, on Wednesday (Jan 15) night, with the city’s Fire and Rescue Agency deploying more than 47 fire trucks and 200 personnel to the site.
The remains of the fire were being extinguished on Thursday evening, and one person has been found dead and a number of others are reportedly missing.
Acting Jakarta Fire and Rescue Agency chief Satriadi Gunawan suspected the blaze started in a nightclub on the seventh floor of the shopping centre and spread rapidly throughout the upper floors of the plaza, blocking escape for people inside the club.
Viral videos of the incident show a number of people waving for help as they were trapped in the flaming building. The fire agency said they managed to rescue nine individuals using hydraulic ladders.
“Nine survived the incident. Thank God they’re all in good condition although they were in shock and had difficulty breathing shortly after being rescued,” a high ranking official from West Jakarta’s fire department, Syariduddin, told journalists on Thursday morning.
“We are still looking for five individuals reported to be missing,” he added. The number of victims, however, could rise as officers have only started the search operations.
Authorities have set up a post where families or relatives of the missing persons can file a report.
As of Thursday afternoon, eight people, all in their 20s, were reported to be missing in the blaze, as suggested in a board within the post, Kompas.com reported.
Also on Thursday afternoon, fire and rescue personnel had recovered one body from the debris.
“So far, we’ve found one dead victim who hasn’t been identified yet,” Syarifuddin said.
The six-storey Glodok Plaza is known to be Jakarta’s top electronics centre. However, before becoming a shopping centre in the 1970s, locals considered the location to be haunted due to its history as a Dutch-managed penitentiary for prisoners facing the death penalty.
The facility, formerly known as Glodok Prison, was reportedly established in 1743 to house Chinese rebels.
As the number of uprisings increased in various regions, including outside of Java, the prison began to house detainees from other islands.
At one point in the 1940s, the country’s founding father and first vice president Mohammad Hatta was detained at Glodok Prison.
It was not until 1977 that the prison underwent a massive transformation to change its function into a shopping area. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
