After nearly 24 hours of being ravaged by flames, all the seven floors of the building, housing the Chennai Silks showroom in T-Nagar, collapsed in the early hours of Thursday. What now remains of the building is the outer shell.
Around 3.19 am, all the floors of the building came crashing down from the inside even as fire fighters struggled to put out the blaze.
Over 450 fire fighters had been struggling the entire day on Wednesday to douse the flames that had engulfed the building.
And just when it seemed like the fire had been brought under control in the night, it started blazing dangerously again at 1 am.
Though the right side of the building has collapsed, there is palpable fear in the area that the entire structure would come crashing down.
While the intensity of the fire has decreased, an official told TNM that the embers were still glowing and that mini fires were erupting every now and then.
Officials had told the media that the pillars of the building had weakened due to the fire.
T-Nagar is a popular commercial hub packed with buildings and experts say many of them continue to exist in violation of building norms despite even the HC’s intervention.
According to reports, a monitoring committee had found that the entrances to Usman Road on either side of Chennai Silks and to Ranganathan Street were far too narrow to allow hydraulic vehicles of the fire service to enter the area for rescue operations. Additionally, most buildings had completely violated the norm of providing a setback area of 7m.