Ethiopian-owned owned Green Garden restaurant in Juba was burnt down in a fire on Saturday. The cause of the blaze is not known, but witness accounts suggest it may have involved cooking gas and electrical wiring.
The blaze started at around 2:00 at the Ethiopian establishment in the Hai Malakal neighborhood just near Equity Bank. One of the waitresses working in the hotel said that she could not tell where the fire started from: “We just saw smoke around the chicken where we were cooking from,” she said.
She said that they tried to save what they could from the restaurant but were soon unable to save much because of the severity of the blaze and the lack of help from the South Sudan Fire Brigade.
“We did not see any help from the fire brigade but we called our relatives who had water tankers to get us water to put down the fire,” she said, referring to the tanker trucks that supply much of Juba with water because of the inadequacy of the city water and sanitation system.
Salem Testa, another employee of the restaurant, said that he heard fire from the cooking gas. “I cannot tell where the fire was from but I saw fire coming out from the cooking gas as I was running out,” he said.
He further added the fire later spread to the power line causing the fire to spread to the neighbors. One of the neighbors said that when they saw smoke and fire out of the hotel, they started rushing to take their own belongings out of their house before the fire spread.
Some bystanders rushed to help. One boda-boda driver near the blaze told Radio Tamazuj he was busy helping neighbors move their belongings and furniture from their home in case it spread there, while other volunteers and staff of the hotel struggled to put out the Green Garden blaze.
Related: Fire damages hotel in Juba’s Buluk neighborhood (2 Oct.)