A devastating fire swept through two top floors of a six-storied building on Park Street for over four hours on Tuesday afternoon. At least tenpersons were killed and over 30 seriously injured in the fire. The charred body of one person was recovered from inside a burnt room while that of a lady was found lying dead out of suffocation. Two jumped to their death out of panic and another died from his burn injury in the hospital. A number of those injured are said to be battling with life.
The joint commissioner of Kolkata Police, Javed Shamin, confirmed the deaths late on Wednesday night.
The affected building, Stephen?s Court, was over 100-year old and at the ground floorof the building was located the Music World and Kolkata?s heritage Swiss confectionery, the Flury?s. Both are favourite haunts for Kolkatans. Thousands watched with horror for hours the leaping flames spreading rapidly and engulfing everything. The plight of those trapped on the burning floors of the building was a shocking account of how the Fire Services faultered and floundered and reduced the fire fighting operation in to a sheer farce.
It took the Fire Services nearly three hours to bring in two hydraulic ladders and pressed those into service. The firemen evidently lacked the necessary training to operate those and could manage to operate only one hydraulic pump after about three hours. The fire brigade headquarters was less than half a km from the fire spot. Later, it was learnt the hydraulic ladders were kept at a fire depot in Behala in the southern fringe of the city and the Fire Brigade headquarters on Free School Street did not have the required space and infrastructure to keep theladders.
There was no dearth of fire tenders, though. There were as many as 40 fire engines that were pressed into service. According to police sources, the fire was detected on the fourth floor first at about 1.30pm.
There are conflicting reports about how the fire originated.
One version said the fire was located in the Stephen?s Court lift first while another version was that the fire originated in the kitchen of a residential flat on the fourth floor.
It could be found that the affected two floors of the Stephen?s Court, fourth and fifth, were a mixture of commercial and residential spaces.
There were commercial offices and there were old residential flats. A large number of people got trapped as the only lift to the building was under flames. Those trapped were on the fourth and fifth floors.
There were desperate clamour for rescue and relief operations as the trapped people signaled from top. But with no ladder in use with the Fire Services, no help could be provided. Locals did a splendid job tying up ladders used for electrical jobs and reach up to a height. They then threw ropes to the trapped inside, some of whom were seen climbing down the ropes first and then latch onto the ladder.
At about 6.30, the fire brigade announced that they have been able to ?surround? the fire and bring it under control. They might have done so but not before exposing thoroughly how ill equipped and ill trained the fire services were to fight the blaze.
?It is sheer God?s providence that more life was not lost and the Music World and the Flury?s were saved, too,? said a curious onlooker on Park Street that was swarming with people .
The Mayor of Kolkata,? Bikash Bhattacharya, who went to the site, said: “The Stphen’s Court is an old building. It is an unfortuanate incident.”