Blaze at Doha’s new airport project destroys three buildings, injures three firefighters

A fierce fire in Qatar on the site of a £7bn airport being built by Bechtel has injured three firefighters and destroyed three buildings. The cause of the fire on Sunday at the new Doha airport site has not yet been discovered but ten vehicles and thirty portable cabins were damaged, according to local reports.

Qatar Civil Aviation Authority and the New Doha International Airport Steering Committee are overseeing the airport’s construction and Bechtel has the contract for construction, planning and design of the current first phase of the project.

The facility, which will replace Doha’s existing airport, has an oasis theme and is designed to handle 50m passengers, 2m tons of cargo, and 320,000 aircraft landings and takeoffs each year.

The job involves using over 60m m3 of fill reclaimed from the sea to create the site, while over 6.3m m3 of improperly disposed household waste has been removed from the site and placed in an engineered landfill.  Work on $11bn project began in 2004 and is expected to continue until 2015 when the gigantic 22km2 airport is fully operational.

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