At least 7 killed as fire breaks out at Hyderabad chemical godown

At least seven people have been killed and three have been injured after a massive fire broke out at a chemical godown on the first floor of a four-storey building at Bazarghat, Nampally area of Telangana’s Hyderabad on Monday.

According to Hyderabad’s Central Zone DCP Venkateshwar Rao, the blaze was caused at around 9:30 am by a spark while repairing a car in the stilt floor, where several drums storing a chemical were also stored.

“The repair work of a car was going on in the godown on the ground floor. The sparks spread to the chemical barrel kept in the godown and caused the fire. It is an inflammable chemical stored in fibre-plastic manufacturing. Within no time, the fire engulfed other floors of the building and caused six deaths”, DCP said.

The fire brigade rushed to the spot and the blaze was brought under control. The DCP further said that an alert was also sounded to the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), which sent two teams to take part in the rescue operations. “We brought the fire under control within an hour and rescued, in all, 21 persons trapped in the building and rushed them to the Osmania General Hospital,” he said.

The cause of the fire and the extent of damage are yet to be officially ascertained.

Earlier in the day, a fire engulfed at an electronics showroom in Hyderabad’s Shalibanda. However, there were no reported casualties. Six fire tenders along with 30 fire fighting personnel despatched to the spot and successfully extinguished the flames, news agency ANI had reported.

“A fire broke out at an electronics showroom at Shalibanda. The fire spread to the second and third floors of the showroom. A total of six fire engines and 30 personnel reached the spot. After three hours of work, we controlled the fire. The incident happened around 1 am today”, Srinivas Reddy, District Fire Officer, Hyderabad said.