Skopje, 12 April 2024 (MIA) — In the Universal Hall fire that broke out Tuesday morning, construction materials that had to be removed had caught on fire, after 70 percent of the construction rubble had already been disposed of, Lazar Arsoski, the contractor overseeing the project, told a press conference Friday.

Arsoski, who runs the general contractor business Universal Balkan Skopje, said Friday the renovating companies working on the project would bear the costs for the damage.

"Almost 70 percent of the materials we needed to dismantle and discard as construction waste had been dismantled from the Universal Hall. Essentially, what caught on fire were elements that were supposed to be removed from the building. Anything valuable, anything of any value to be kept in a museum or to be reused was taken out in 2021. What was left behind were old materials such as plywood, old steel, old aluminum," Arsoski said.

In response to a reporter asking if the fire had done the work for them given that those materials were to be discarded, Arsoski said it had actually made their job more difficult since now they would have to find a way to deal with the molten steel instead of dismantling the steel elements as they had previously intended.

"There's no running away from the contract," Arsoski said. "The damage will be determined and our companies will bear the costs. Any damage to the steel structure will be repaired or it will replaced with a new one." 

"Once again, there were no casualties in this fire and no excessive damage to the project itself," he said, adding that expert engineers were evaluating the damage.

One of them, Ljubin Makarovski, told the press that an audit of the construction activities needed to be completed before the works were allowed to continue.

"If the metal construction is damaged, it will be replaced. If parts are damaged, only those parts will be replaced. Of course, the part that caught on fire needed to be reconstructed anyway, but no money had been spent on it yet as this was planned for the project's second phase," Makarovski said.

Following the Universal Hall fire on Tuesday morning, two middle-aged women were admitted to the Toxicology clinic with mild gas poisoning. They had been in a nearby apartment building when the fire erupted and had stepped out onto the balcony, breathing in the smoke.

No one else was hurt in the fire. Despite ongoing renovations, there were no construction workers at the premises when the building broke out in flames, Skopje Fire Department chief Zvonko Tomeski said on Tuesday.

Tomeski also said that although the temperature was extremely high and had caused material damage to some surrounding buildings, melting window shutters for example, the firefighters had quickly brought it under control. 

Twenty-four firefighters were battling the blazes, using nine fire engines. The cause for the fire was yet to be determined by the police, he said. mr/