New Year’s Eve skyscraper fire in Dubai burns on into 2016

Officials believe the fire started on the 20th floor before spreading to the building’s exterior.

Flames rip through the Address Downtown hotel after it was hit by a massive fire, near the world’s tallest tower, Burj Khalifa, in Dubai, on December 31, 2015.

Fore fighters rushed to the spot and brought the flames under control.

A civil defence official told Al Arabiya that Dubai’s New Year celebrations will proceed.

Smoke was still rising from a 63-storey luxury hotel in Dubai on Friday as authorities worked to determine the cause of a spectacular fire that engulfed the building on New Year’s Eve.

The Maltese couple who were at the hotel’s 63rd floor at the time of the fire.

“As we applauded the water show, The Address hotel burst into flames”.

A massive fire that engulfed the The Address Downtown Hotel Dubai last night has been put out by Dubai authorities, reports said.

Fourteen people suffered minor injuries, and one person experienced a heart attack during the evacuation, according to the Twitter account of the government of Dubai’s media office.

“When I saw lights and heard the sounds of footsteps at the floor I was in, I started tapping on the aluminium to get their attention”, he said. To manage the crowds, Dubai police closed off some roads and the metro before the fire broke out.

The highly anticipated New Year’s Eve festivities in the United Arab Emirates’ most populous city – including what was billed as one of the world’s largest fireworks displays – went ahead as planned.

Organizers had installed 400,000 LED lights on the Burj Khalifa and used some 1.6 tons of fireworks for this year’s 7-minute extravaganza.

“I was busy clicking pictures when my colleague suddenly screamed that there was a fire”, Mallari was quoted as saying.

The hotel is one of the tallest buildings in Dubai, with seven lounges and restaurants as well as a beauty spa, according to its website.

Witnesses in the area said several nearby skyscrapers were evacuated. Among them was Chris Browne, a tourist from London, who watched the blaze with her husband, Stephen, standing behind her. They said they hoped no one was injured.

An AFP photographer at the scene said “it began in the middle of the hotel, then went down like lightning before shooting up again”.