Sureifi, a 200-year-old house classified as a second-class historic building, Wednesday joined the list of Jeddah landmarks condemned to rubble after fire gutted its four floors. Although unoccupied, the house was reportedly being used by a lady of Asian nationality as a place of storage for carton boxes and scrap metal. Locals in Jeddah's historic Al-Balad District awoke Wednesday morning to find smoke and flames emerging from the building and fire services arrived to prevent the blaze spreading to neighboring buildings, one being the well-known Al-Bai'a Hotel, in an operation hindered by high winds. The fire, however, gutted Bayt Al-Sureifi in its entirety, the house's “rowashein” window lattices and wooden ceilings and roof providing fuel for the blaze, and the construction eventually collapsed, leaving nothing but a ripped out standing wall and pile of stone and debris. According to former chief supervisor of the historical district and now Supervisor of the Tourism and Culture Department Sami Nawar, 65 of some 500 historic Jeddah buildings have been lost to a variety of causes, prominent among them fire and neglect. “At present people who live in these areas aren't aware of their historical and cultural value,” Nawar said. – Okaz/SG Second fire in Al-Balad By Ibrahim Alawi JEDDAH – Barely a day after the loss of the historic Bayt Al-Sureifi in Old Jeddah due to fire, fire services were called to another house in Al-Balad where flames were gutting the upper floors. No reason was given for the cause of the blaze which broke at the four-story building out late Thursday night, but officials said that no one was injured and that firemen had prevented the flames spreading to the ground floor of the site which consists of small shops.
