By Wetondo Denis Julius
MBALE CITY
A fire has this morning, 6th April, 2022 gutted at least 15 spare parts’ shops in Mbale garage leaving dealers counting losses.
The fire is the second in less than two months where shops in the same location got burnt with police attributing the earlier fire to an unattended charcoal stove.
According to Kasule Juma, a wiring man in Mbale garage, the fire started at around 1:00am and all his spare parts worth Ugx30m have been destroyed.
Kasule says everyone is attributing the fire outbreak to an electric short circuit but hastened to add that the cause is not yet confirmed.
“The Police Fire Brigade was there parked and could not help us, they were instead asking us to switch off power before they can put off the fire in the process we lost a lot,” Kasule said.
Mushuhu Sulaiman, a mechanical engineer of gearboxes and an agent of Equity bank in Mbale garage whose two shops were razed down, says that he has lost spare parts worth 70million shillings, cash of Ugx6m and all documents for the bank.
Nambozo Hajarah, who sells juice drinks in Mbale garage, said that the problem in the garage is congestion arguing that if the kiosks were spaced they couldn’t be affected more.
“You find shops squeezed and when fire guts you can’t manage to save anything,” she said.
Nambozo, applauded the Police fire rescue team for the response as they managed to stop the fire from spreading to other parts.
