Massive blaze at furniture-making firm on Mysuru Road, two dead

13 fire engines are sent in to control the fire.
Massive blaze at furniture-making firm on Mysuru Road, two dead
Massive blaze at furniture-making firm on Mysuru Road, two dead
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On a quiet and narrow by-lane located in Bengaluru’s Vinayak Nagar, a four-storey building went up in flames on Friday at around 1pm.

According to officials at the Bengaluru North Fire Station, a call came in from the control room at 1.03 pm.

“We were told that a ground plus three-storey building in Vinayak Nagar near Mysuru Road, where a furniture-making firm was located, was on fire, and the whole building was in flames. We immediately dispatched 13 tankers vehicles with 50 firefighters to the spot,” said an official at the Bengaluru North Fire Station.

After a four-hour operation, the firefighters managed to put out the fire. During the operation, the firefighters found the bodies of two men, who were burnt alive.

“Based on the reports from the spot, it has been established that the first and third (top most) floors of the building housed a madrassa for young boys. Luckily, they had gone to a nearby mosque for namaz as it is Friday and escaped the fire,” said DCP West, Anuchet.

The firefighters suspect that one of the two dead men was a worker at the furniture-making firm, while the other man, Hafiz, worked at a firm named Galaxy, located on the second floor.

“It became very difficult for the firefighters to enter the building as the whole structure was up in flames. They had to break open the back wall of the building to enter. By the time most of the fire was put out, it became very difficult to identify the charred remains. Preliminary suspicion is that the fire started because of a short circuit in the ground floor,” said DCP Anuchet.

According to the owner of the building, Abdul, who lives three doors away from the burnt structure, there was a power cut in the area at around 11am.

“The power came back sometime between 12.30 and 1pm. When we saw the flames, we immediately informed the fire department, we also evacuated as many men as we could from the ground floor. On the second floor, five employees were evacuated. We did not have time to check if everyone was out as the smoke had spread throughout the building and we could not see anything,” Abdul said.

Very quickly, many people gathered around the building and some of the men were trying to look inside and see if anyone was inside, Abdul recounts.

“Initially we suspected that four men were stuck inside. As the situation was difficult, firefighters from Avalahalli and Srinivas Nagar were roped in. The Civil Defence personnel also came in to help. We still do not know how many people were there. The place was so badly charred and so were the bodies of the two men. At that point, it became difficult to identify if the remains were of humans or furniture. We are combing through the place and throwing away the burnt furniture to see if any other person was stuck inside,” the official from the fire department said.

The bodies of the two men have been taken to Victoria Hospital. The police have asked the workers of the furniture-making firm to go to the hospital to identify the body.

The firefighters are still looking out for more casualties.

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