The Chez Gado Gado restaurant in Seminyak has burned down almost entirely. The fire started from party balloons during a birthday celebration and spread to the dry grass roof within minutes. No one was hurt.
The fire broke out on the evening of Sunday, August 30. A birthday party was being held at the restaurant, and according to the police's preliminary version, a candle flame touched the balloons used to decorate the covered terrace. Guests heard a pop, and the fire shot upward to the ceiling made of dry alang-alang grass.
The restaurant's security guard tried to put out the flames with an extinguisher but was too late. The dry roof caught instantly, and the fire spread across almost the entire building, which measures roughly 45 by 40 meters.
Firefighters arrived ten minutes after the call. Ten trucks from five stations were sent to fight the fire, using about 115 thousand liters of water.
The fire was brought under control in two hours and forty minutes. Damage is estimated at around 4 billion rupiah, or about 225 thousand dollars; property worth 700 million rupiah was carried out of the office in the southern part of the building in time. Police are investigating the cause of the fire.
The helium such balloons are supposed to be filled with does not burn, since it is an inert gas. But it is expensive, and in Indonesia balloons are often filled with hydrogen, which ignites from any open flame. In July, at a celebration in Klungkung, a man used a lighter to burn through a balloon string, and eleven people were burned, mostly children.
Wood, bamboo, and grass roofs catch fire easily, and on an open shoreline the wind fans the flames. A week earlier, for the same reason, ten bars burned down on Peranchak Beach in Canggu.
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