Qatar - hope you are all OK

[Sibble]

Says it all really, just caught the morning news and hope you are all OK

Ditto to that. Have just seen the news online.
13 children & 4 teachers
Dreadful.
As a possible future resident I am shocked and saddened to read this.
Thoughts and prayers are with those injured or killed

Saw it last night. Dreadful, those poor children. I read one Spanish foly lost 3 children. i read the new mall had no fire alarms or sprinklers

Such a terrible tragedy. Those poor poor families.

NZ media is reporting that a NZ expat family lost their two year old triplets in the childcare centre. awful awful awful.

I am in Doha, and the situation is absolutely horrendous. The mall is a single storey (very up market) mall, except for the daycare centre which is along a narrow corridor and up a lift to the floor above the mall offices. I believe there were stairs, but read in one report they were destroyed by fire. It is said that the authorites were not informed by the mall management that there are a day care centre and by the time they found out and broke through the roof it was too late. 13 children, 4 teachers and 2 firefighters died. There were fire alarms apparently, but they did not sound in the shops. The sprinklers apparently malfunctioned. None of this surprises me. I was in a different shopping mall in Doha a few months ago, in the supermarket. I came out of the supermarket to find the alarms in the mall (didn't hear them in Carrefour) and smoke in the aisles. I asked a security guard, why aren't you evacuating? He said and quote "Its only a small fire ma'am"! Needless to say I got out of there quickly. Qatari authorities are notorious for not allowing any reporting that shows Qatar in a bad light. I really hope that international pressure will force a full, accurate and transparent investigation, particularly in light of the fact that Qatar is hosting the World Cup in 10 years time.

We moved here on Sunday and are shocked and saddened by the news. We're also very thankful that we decided not to head to the Villagio yesterday.

My thoughts go out to anyone involved.

Everyone's in shock. With health and safety levels here is was a disaster waiting to happen but everyone's still in shock. Two firemen also lost their lives trying to get the children out.

I am in Doha too and I live right across the street from this mall, and am in there virtually on a daily basis. In fact it has just been half term (which for us was over a long weekend) and my kids were in that end of the mall the previous day, in the theme park and food court. I second everything that cg said.

This may be a capital 'city' but it cannot be compared to London. It has a cosy, small town feel more akin to Norwich or Edinburgh, and the expat community is very tight knit one, so things like this feel so much closer to home - if fact they literally are closer to home. This has absolutely devastated everyone and the ripples will be felt for a very long time.

cg on the Doha Mums forum yesterday one woman sais she was having lunch in Dean and Deluca and the fire alarms went off but she was told by security that is was only a small fire in another part of the mall, she would not be affected and she had time to finish her lunch. In Dean and Deluca for crying out loud! Not even at the very opposite end of the bloody mall!

The best reportage I can find of it this morning is the Daily Mail online. The pictures are absolutely heart rending though.

Yes Hilly, I saw that too on DMs. It is so completely typical of the attitude here. Have you seen the Ministry of Interior report - some interesting wording used there.
www.moi.gov.qa/site/english/news/2012/05/28/25879.html

To be honest anything that is reported from an official source I would take with a huge dose of salt around here, but the beauty of things like Twitter and internet forums is that the witness evidence starts to leak out immediately and as things are unfolding, and they are notoriously difficult to censor, thank goodness.

I don't think anyone would have an issue with the emergency services themselves - it seems they did everything they possibly could, but the fact that they could not immediately access maps of the layout and all the relevant information they needed speaks volumes.

I have a horrible feeling the death count my have gone up, as I saw one of those ambulance-hearse things on Al Waab street this morning, right near Villagio. To be honest, in all the chaos it is entirely likely that there were others trapped who went unnoticed while everyone worked to reach the children.

Horrific. Having been an expat I know how small the community can be.

Also hoping nobody I know was affected.

Heartbreaking.

shamozal.blogspot.com/2012/05/numb-with-grief.html

It is such a tragedy..my heart goes out to all those affected. When a state is more keen on how things look and sound than on having practical plans for how to deal with emergencies effectively, it means a lot of unnecessary deaths. I hope the families file a case against the authorities or at least campaign hard and long with international media focus so that this does not happen again.

Hilly - whilst I know you mean well, please don't quote from Doha Mums. It's against their terms and conditions as it's a closed forum.

Yes, I realised that too late Bedu, I will ask for it to be deleted. Although in my defence that quote may well come from any of the non-closed forums and twitter -they are all full of comments like that and I did not name the source of the actual quote specifically. I get your point. Obviously I would not identify anyone specifically, or quote anything ultra-sensitive or personal concerning the bereaved, whether a forum was closed or not.

I know Hilly - doesn't actually matter here (because there's nothing identifying) but there are been problems in the past so people can get quite touchy about it.

Ok thanks.

That blog entry is brilliantly written and says everything that needs to be said cg - thanks for linking.

Heartbreaking for all involved.
Bedumum I wouldnt worry too much about Doha mums forum. Roxanne was as inarticulate as ever on SkyNews. Not too much concern on her part for the people, families and children involved, just 3 mentions of dohamums in the 60 second clip. Not very nice on her part.

Incidentally a friend in the middle east works on health and safety in shopping malls and he will not allow (and yes I know how that sounds) his wife to go to a certain mall in Dubai as it does not have sprinklers or a fire alarm, and has on at least 2 occassions in the last few years had a fire.

Idontcare - I personally know Roxanne and what she is going through at the moment. Nothing compared to the families involved of course but at least she's doing something to help. She doesn't get to choose how skynews edits its programming.

I also know Roxanne and she has been involved with helping the families from the start. I didn't see the skynews clip, but if it gave the impression that she is uncaring, then it got her totally completely and utterly wrong.

I have been holding it together quite well until I saw I think it is one of the most moving things I have ever seen.

The first time I played it the buffering paused just as they'd finished and I could see a freeze frame of the expressions on their faces, before they started walking forwards. I could tell instantly by that picture that those people were looking into the faces of parents who had lost their babies. I just lost it after that. I should be driving my son to school now but I'm still sitting on my bed not caring if he's late. It just doesn't seem to matter at the moment.

(don't worry, it is not footage of the disaster scene itself, but of the vigil at Aspire Park the following day. Not ghoulish, just monumentally sad.)