Fire engulfed a 63-storey skyscraper The Address Hotel in Dubai this evening. The building has been evacuated. Despite the blaze at the Address hotel, the display at the nearby Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, started as planned at midnight.
Officials say the fire has been brought under control and 16 people suffered mostly minor injures.
It is unclear what caused the blaze, which broke out as large crowds had gathered to ring in the new year. Read more...
Television pictures showed pieces of blazing debris raining down from The Address as evacuated occupants hurried away from the building, some running.
"We came out on my balcony to look at the Burj. All the buildings around here had fireworks prepped on the roof," Paul Mithun, a U.S. consultant in downtown Dubai said.
"We were like, huh, that looks like a little Olympic torch off in the distance. We thought someone lit fireworks. In under two minutes, the fire went up two-thirds of the length of the hotel. I watched the whole thing. It was real bad."
But as midnight struck, with the Address building continuing to burn, onlookers cheered as a swirling mass of multicoloured fireworks enveloped the Burj Khalifa.
The Dubai government's media office said the Address blaze was 90 percent under control. Police chief Major General Khamis Matar told Al Arabiya television: "All residents of the hotel were evacuated and there are 14 injured, with light injuries.”
A medic on the scene who declined to be identified told Reuters: "There are more than 60 people injured with light injuries from smoke inhalation and from crowding while in the stairs evacuating the building."
One resident staying on the 15th floor of the tower, completed in 2008, told Britain's Sky News of "absolute pandemonium" as those inside realized the building was ablaze.
"The alarms went off when the building was already properly on fire," he said.
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