I was amazed how many there are. 8 "notable" skyscraper fires last year.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skys...#Notable_fires

Balconies are the real danger point for external fires starting. Discarded cigarette ends falling into rubbish, barbecues, cigarettes touching flimsy curtains on the way in/out through the sliding doors......
Flush façade buildings, some of which do not even have opening windows, (e.g. Gate Towers in Abu Dhabi) are much less likely to catch fire from external causes.
Just something to bear in mind when you look for a place to rent in the area.

Dubain / Old King Coal
Very well posted and quite prophetic as I was talking about this with one of your NZ colleagues ( 777 Pilot) while he was heading to the UK to see spouse and family pre Christmas.
There are a large number of towers throughout the Gulf as Old King Coal highlighted that have "Roman candled". My speciality is façade engineering and this characteristic is well known, and has been designed / mitigated against for a number of years in other areas, but at a cost which resulted in increased build costs and requiring a skilled design / installation team. This resulted in jobs being lost to more value engineering based contractors, (Its not engineering it is cost cutting, there is little if any engineering involved !) who maybe were less concerned of the out come, or more commonly just know they will disappear with luck before this type of issue occurs. As for German engineering in this field, they have had, and continue to have many respected firms in this area of expertise, but even they suffer on occasions when working with unscrupulous companies in your geographical area. Made for an interesting counterpoint to the Fire work display though.


Cheers
Mr Mac

Repairs begin...
 

Emaar have already appointed a contractor to carry out clean up and refurbishment. DUTCO. The local arm of Balfour Beatty from UK, who also have an in house MEP organisation BK Gulf. Seems Dutco will appoint a consultant to oversee the works. DUTCO built the adjacent Dubai Mall and are now extending that.

The original contractor(s) of The Address were Besix (from Belgium) when the place was first built. More info here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ad...Downtown_Dubai

Presumably the damaged cladding must be replaced with new fire-resistant / fire-retardant panels and the undamaged part of the tower (maybe around 85% of the total) will also be upgraded to match? That won't be cheap.

Another towering inferno - this time in Ajman. Reportedly no casualties and successful evacuation which suggests it was again more or less limited to the external cladding. And burning falling debris has propagated it to at least one adjacent tower. Not good.


Fire engulfs residential tower near Ajman Corniche | The National

No casualties = no casualties reported by State owned media.