In less than a month, another young Indian expatriate has died in a winter warming accident in Saudi Arabia.
Post Date – 07:41 PM, Mon – 2 January 23
Abdul Zaheer of Nirmal district (file photo)
Jeddah: In less than a month, another young Indian expatriate has died in a winter warming accident in Saudi Arabia.
Winter heater use is high in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Gulf, where most people die from suffocation from fire accidents. Abdul Zaheer, 28, a native of Riyadh’s Nirmal district, suffocated to death on Sunday when a heater caught fire while he was sleeping.
Abdul Zaheer works as a driver for a Saudi family in the Malaz area of the capital. His father recently died of cancer in India. As the sole breadwinner of his family, he died tragically from inhaling smoke from a fire in a radiator.
Community workers Abdul Rafiq and Muzammil Shaikh are working to represent the victims’ families through the legal process.
Earlier, a young family driver from Tamil Nadu died in Riyadh under similar circumstances.
Smoke is the silent killer in fire accidents and the risk increases while sleeping because the victim does not feel the smoke until the asphyxiation becomes severe. A study showed that Saudi Arabia uses an average of 7 million heaters in winter, running for about 45 hours. Civil Defense has repeatedly reminded people of the safety and precautions of winter heaters.
