Fire breaks out at The Star building

A fire has broken out at The Star this morning, starting on the second floor of the Sauer Street building.

The Star's headquarters in the Johannesburg CBD sustained extensive damage this morning as firefighters battled to contain the blaze.

Unconfirmed reports spreading through the building attributed the cause to a faulty microwave. But The Star is ready to continue publishing today.

Dozens of employees stood outside the building's main entrance after being told they weren't allowed inside due to the excessive smoke that had built up just half an hour after the fire had started.

Fireman inspecting the gutted second floor suspected that a faulty microwave may have been the start of the fire that took out a large portion of the second floor.

Security was alerted to the fire at about 6am. Workers in the building were warned of the smoke already thickening on the other floors of the building.

While it was originally just a smell of smoke pervading the first floor newsroom, just minutes later it became flooded with smoke just after 6.15am, as the fire intensified.

One of the building's own workers attempted to combat the flames before emergency services arrived just before 7am. He was unable to put out the blaze that required four fire trucks to extinguish.

However, by 8.15am, fire services were still trying to put out the flames in the kitchen where the fire appeared to have originated. Unfortunately, even as EMS managed to get the fire under control, the lower floors were damaged as torrents of water dripped through the ceiling. Soaked computers, damaged notebooks and damages to the building's central server were reported, but no injuries were discovered. Several employees noted this was the second fire in the past decade, after an airconditioning unit ignited several years ago.

- Staff reporters/IOL