Another fire at Grand Lisboa Palace adds fuel to arson theory

Another fire raged through the construction site of the Grand Lisboa Palace in the early hours of yesterday morning, the second such case after a similar incident back in March, and the fourth in the past three years. As in the previous case, the Judiciary Police said it believes foul play was the likely cause.

According to a TDM report, some 88 workers were on site when the fire was reported around Sunday midnight.

All but one were successfully evacuated following the arrival of firefighters at the scene, but one non-resident worker was reported trapped on the building’s 14th floor. He was eventually rescued and taken to hospital.

The response from firefighters constituted 115 personnel and 35 fire engines equipped with water canons.

But due to the windy weather, the fire proved difficult to combat and it took more than four hours for the response team to quench it.

Lam Hio Fan from the Fire Services Bureau told TDM, “it’s an ongoing construction site so the environment was quite complex there with lots of construction materials and plus the area was fairly large. The lack of light has brought many difficulties to our rescue operations.”

A similar case was reported in March at the same construction site. Fire service authorities said at the time that the fire, which originated in a storage room located on the 14th floor, was probably caused by arson.

Another two, separate but similar cases, were reported in the two years prior to the March incident.

The project is set to open its doors in the first half of 2018.

A representative of the resort operator would not comment to TDM on whether the opening will be impacted by yesterday’s incident. The representative said that the company would evaluate the site, but that construction works will go on as planned.