On February 17, 2018, the temple caught fire at 6:40 p.m. (local time), before sunset in Lhasa, with the blaze lasting until late that evening. Although photos and videos about the fire were spread on Chinese social media, which showed the eaved roof of a section of the building lit with roaring yellow flames and emitting a haze of smoke, these images were quickly censored and disappeared. The official newspaper "Tibet Daily" briefly claimed online that the fire was "quickly extinguished" with "no deaths or injuries" at the late night, while The "People's Daily" published the same words online and added that there had been "no damage to relics" in the temple; both of these reports contained no photos. The temple was temporarily closed after the fire but were reopened to public on February 18, according to official Xinhua news agency. But the yellow draperies had been newly hung behind the temple's central image, the Jowo statue. And no one was allowed to enter the second floor of the temple, according to the source of Radio Free Asia's Tibetan Service. The fire burned an area of about 50 square meters. The temple's golden cupola had been removed to guard against any collapse and protective supports had been added around the Jowo statue, according to Xinhua. On February 19, 2018, the Dalai Lama's supporters based in India reported eyewitness accounts that "the source of the fire is not the Jowo chapel but from an adjacent chapel within the Jokhang temple premises known in Tibetan as Tsuglakhang" and confirming that there were "no casualties and damage to property is yet to be ascertained".