A fire tore through a seven-story office building in Jakarta on Tuesday, killing at least 22 people, including a pregnant woman, police said.
The blaze engulfed the structure in Central Jakarta’s Kemayoran neighborhood around midday, sending thick black smoke over the area and triggering panic among nearby residents and office workers.
Central Jakarta Police Chief Susatyo Purnomo Condro said the fire is believed to have started on the first floor before racing upward through the building.
Hundreds of responders and 29 fire trucks were dispatched to contain the flames. Authorities said the cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Many workers in the building, which served as a sales and storage office for a drone company, were out for lunch when a battery began sparking in a storage and testing area, Condro said, citing several 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 police hospital in East Jakarta for identification.
“It is suspected that a short circuit or thermal failure in the drone battery triggered an explosion and fire,” a survivor named Dimitri, who like many Indonesians uses a single name, told local television.
“Some colleagues on the upper floors tried to escape by moving to the rooftop while calling for help,” he said.
Television reports showed the tense evacuation of more than a dozen trapped workers, including many women, from the sixth floor using an emergency ladder extended by firefighters. Each person had to be lowered one by one from the building, and several struggled to breathe because of the thick smoke while waiting for their turn.
Families anxiously awaited news at hospitals or near the building rented by PT Terra Drone Indonesia, a company that provides unmanned aerial vehicle technology for industrial sectors such as construction, mining, oil and gas, energy, plantations and urban planning.
