Following the fire last week that destroyed its archives, Braiman Municipality has reopened its doors to citizens. There was still a heavy smell of smoke in the building. Eng. Abdullah Al-Ajmi, director of the municipality, told Okaz/Saudi Gazette that all departments are operational. “We worked over the past two days to remove all the debris of the fire and get the departments up and running again. The archives department is of course still closed as Civil Defense investigations have not been completed yet,” he said. “The administration has taken into consideration the weak security and fire safety measures and will install cameras in the future,” Al-Ajmi said, adding that the archives department will have its own section. The destroyed documents have not yet been identified. However, he said they did not contain any information about land grants as has been rumored on the Internet lately. The team looking into the cause of the fire decided to postpone their investigation until a team of fire experts arrives from Riyadh. Col. Saeed Sarhan, spokesman of Makkah Civil Defense, said the team will inspect the location to look for clues that may reveal the cause of the blaze. “We'll leave no stone unturned,” he said. Meanwhile, the Jeddah Mayoralty has denied news carried by a local daily, in an official statement Saturday, that two citizens had set fire to the archives and that a businessman was involved in the incident. Dr. Abdul Aziz Al-Nahari, Jeddah Mayoralty spokesman, said that the director of Braiman Municipality did not give statements to any newspapers and that the news carried by the local daily was untrue. __
