The tallest tower housing the Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel is located in the middle of the building structure. It took 400 firefighters to put out the fire, which burned for 10 hours, consuming nine floors of the tower. The tallest tower adorned with the Makkah Royal Clock stands 601m-high above ground, which makes it one of the ten tallest skyscrapers in the world. The upper portion of the clock tower (from a height of 450m up to the top) was designed by the German architecture firm SL Rasch. Currently it is the fifth-tallest freestanding structure in the world, surpassing the Ping An Finance Centre in Shenzhen, China but shorter than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE, the Tokyo Skytree in Tokyo, Japan, the Shanghai Tower in Shanghai, China, and the Canton Tower in Guangzhou, China. The Saudi coat of arms is displayed at the centre of each clock behind the dials. Soon, the entire building was engulfed in smoke. Mecca's mega architecture casts shadow over hajj. The light beams are intended to allow the deaf, and Muslims in more distant parts of Mecca and nearby cities, to know prayer timings. The tallest tower in the complex is the tallest building in Saudi Arabia, with a height of 601 metres (1,972 feet). Those five parts were then lifted and installed above the spire from 20 June to 6 July 2011. There were reports that the clock would be set to local Mecca Time, in an attempt to replace the IERS Reference Meridian as the prime meridian for global time keeping, but the clock is set to Arabia Standard Time (UTC+03:00).[18][19]. Above from The Jewel the spire has only technical installations for sound, light and other infrastructure and eventually the last viewing deck and the crescent above it. At the heart of the holiest Islamic city, Makkah Royal Clock Tower brings an air of modernization to the bustling historic center of Mecca. Hospitals were put on high alert, but no injuries were reported. These towers are a part of the King Abdulaziz Endowment Project that aims to modernize the city in catering to its pilgrims. The tallest tower in the complex also contains a five-star hotel, operated by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, to help provide lodging for the millions of pilgrims that travel to Mecca annually to participate in the Hajj. L'Abraj Al Bait Towers est un complexe formé de sept gratte-ciels situé à La Mecque (Arabie saoudite), dont les travaux ont été achevés en 2012[1]. The tower features a 71m-tall spire above the clock that raises the building height to 601m above ground. The Makkah Royal Clock Tower site is spread over 23ha south of the Masjid al Haram. The seven towers of the building rest on a 15-storey and 115m-high podium, which houses a grand retail area.