The 15th of December in 1936 marked a turning point in the history of firefighting in the kingdom of Bahrain, the Manama municipality established its first fire brigade with a fully equipped vehicle in response to a massive fire that raged for several days in the Manama old market. Fire tore through the old market, and with nothing organised to fight it, trades watched a lifetime of stock burn and from that single vehicle grew today’s general directorate of civil defense.
The fire that changed everything
Ninety years on, the place that created the fire service still tests it the hardest. In 1976 a fire took old builds of commercial shops, residential apartments and a vast run of stores, leavinga quarter of a million dinars of fire damage. On 12 June 2024 another fire began in a multi-storey building, spread to the shops, and burned for more than 30 hours, killing three, injuring nine, destroying more than 70 properties, and passing ten million dinars in fire damage.
Neither fire was unpredictable, back then a market was concrete, timber and palm and today’s market is concrete-framed, but the fire load is bolted into the frame from timber mezzanines, plywood and sheet-metal fronts. It has ignitable finishes, untested materials and shares concealed voids that move a fire across a row unseen. Ignition is overwhelmingly electrical: Old wiring under the electrical load, cigarettes, irresponsible welding and negligence.
Years of construction have left lanes no more than a metre and a half width in the depth of the market. Goods stacked outside shops narrowed them further, cutting off the path a fire attack crew needs to advance and the path a resident above a burning shop needs to get out. The people working on the ground floor and living above have no fire safety awareness, and their daily habits raise the risk before any fire starts. In a fire they are the last to know and the last to get out.
Why the risk remains
The market predates every fire regulation Bahrain has ever issued. The GCC extinguishing and alarm equipment requirements, the basis of Bahrain’s fire provisions before 2025, stated that applying obligations to existing buildings was not practical, but gave the authority to request additional equipment where a real hazard existed. Those same obligations required full compliance whenever a building was altered, extended or changed in use. The market fails that condition on its own record and sees alterations constantly.
Following the MOU signed between Bahrain and NFPA, the Bahrain Fire and Life Safety Code 2025 became the first unified standalone fire and life safety code in the Kingdom, giving legal force to NFPA codes and standards across all occupancies.
A new legal framework
For most shops in the market, NFPA 101 does not require a sprinkler retrofit as individual units fall below the floor area thresholds that trigged the requirement in existing occupancies. What the code does require for every occupancy, regardless of size or age, is a working alarm, emergency lighting and a clear way out. For buildings of heritage value, NFPA 914 works alongside 101 and the broader NFPA codes and standards to give the AHJ flexibility to accept alternate approaches where conventional systems are not practical.
Passive protection comes first
Following that, the first investment should be passive, because it works without water, pump and without any agreement between the separate owners of a market built across centuries. Fire moves through the market unseen, through the continuous roof space above the shops, the concealed voids between units, the open stair connecting the floor where goods are sold, to the rooms where people sleep. Compartmentation closes those paths. A fire rated barrier between shops, masonry brought up to the underside of the roof deck and fire-stopped at every void, is the difference between one gutted unit and a lost row. The stairs that killed people in 2024 closes in the same work. It can be done in any unit by any owner, without touching the fabric worth keeping.
Detecting fire earlier
Detection comes next, and it cannot run as a single network across a market in many hands, yet each shop and dwelling above must get its own standalone unit, owned by the occupier, with monitoring through a remote supervising station that reports directly to the civil defense under NFPA72. Wireless devices eliminate the need to run cabling through walls or ceilings. In a market where incense burns constantly and cooking happens in every unit, a single-sensor detector will false alarm daily until the occupants disconnect it, so the multi-criteria devices combining heat and smoke reduce that problem.
The principle already has a local example, Bab Al Bahrain, the gate to the old market, was built in 1945, restored in 2012, and is currently undergoing modification with listed materials, upgraded fire suppression and detection systems, and full safety requirements, without altering the heritage that makes it worth keeping. NFPA 914 is the framework that makes that approach repeatable across the rest of the district.
Building a reliable water supply
Water reaches the market through the city mains, but those mains were sized for domestic use, not fire demands. When fire appliances demand full flow, the aging pipework ruptures beyond 2 bars, before it reaches the pressure firefighting operations need. NFPA 24 covers this. Where the public supply cannot deliver the flow, a dedicated private main fed from an independent tank is used, mains no smaller than 150 millimeters, 1.4 bar residual maintained at the hydrant under maximum demand. The plant goes at the perimeter, because a tank is dead load bolted on the structures that were never built to carry. Hose reels and extinguishers give the occupier something to use before the brigade reaches the edge. The hydrants are what the brigade will use when they get there.
Technology is not enough
The measures mean nothing if the people they protect cannot use them. The General Directorate of Civil Defense has already launched a multilingual fire safety campaign, and NFPA 914 calls for exactly that through community education with fire safety awareness, and reinforced during festival peaks where that area has uncontrollable occupant load. The legal basis to act now exists and redevelopment is underway, the order is established: compartmentation, detection, water supply suppression when the structure can carry.
The market gave Bahrain its fire service, and it is time for the fire service to give back to the market.
