200 scrapped vehicles destroyed in Zarqa fire

AMMAN — A fire at the Zarqa Free Zone (ZFZ) on Thursday gutted over 200 scrapped vehicles, but no one was injured, official sources said.

The fire, which started at 12:45pm in a seven-dunum area with 1,000 scrapped vehicles, lasted for two hours and took around eight fire engines to bring under control, Jordan Free Zone Investor Commission President Nabeel Romman said. 

Civil Defence Department (CDD) officials said the cause of the fire remains under investigation.

“We have formed a committee to look into the incident to determine what caused the fire,” a CDD official told The Jordan Times.

However, Romman said “most probably the fire was caused by spilled oil and petrol from the vehicles”.

“Usually the weather is hotter here than in Amman by around five degrees, and this makes it easier for the flammable substances that cover the ground to catch fire,” Romman explained.

He noted that the vehicles parked in the affected area “have almost no value at all”.

“Usually these vehicles are cleared by the Jordan Customs Department to be scrapped, and the owners pay the fees for two years and are then able to exchange them for hybrid vehicles,” Romman said.

The vehicles are then sold to factories for “melting purposes and the highest price for a scrap vehicle is JD100”, added that Romman, who has 26 years of experience at the ZFZ.

The most important thing, he said, is that no one was injured in this "huge fire".