Fire at cinema hall in west Delhi, no injuries

The incident occurred at Fun Cinema auditorium number 3 during the screening of Hollywood movie Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. 67 people who were in the theatre were safety evacuated

A fire broke out a cinema hall in west Delhi’s Moti Nagar on Sunday afternoon, officials aware of the matter said, adding that 67 people who were in the theatre at the time of the incident were all safety evacuated.

Screengrab of a video of the fire tender at the cinema hall. (HT PHOTO)

The incident occurred at Fun Cinema auditorium number 3 during the screening of Hollywood movie Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, fire officials said, adding that prima facie, the blaze originated in the projection room. They said the auditorium is located on the third floor of the building.

Atul Garg, director of Delhi Fire Services, said they received a call about the blaze at 1.12pm. “Since it was the question of fire in a cinema hall, we rushed seven fire tenders to the spot,” said Garg.

B Prakash, a senior fire officer, said the fire tenders took only around two minutes to reach the cinema hall. “By the time we reached there, the cinema staffers had begun rescuing the audience members,” said Prakash. “The fire was found to be in the projector room, an isolated cabin cramped for space and dark and filled with machines, as is common in all projector rooms.”

Praveen Kumar, sub-officer of Moti Nagar fire station, said that the auditorium had a seating capacity of around 200. “The fire seemed to be in the split AC in the projector room. There was so much smoke that we couldn’t have gone into the auditorium and searched for anyone trapped inside without breathing apparatus,” he said.

While the cause for the fire remains unclear, Prakash said it took about six to seven minutes to douse the flames. “One team was involved in extinguishing the fire. The other team focused on rescuing the audience members who were all brought out through the emergency door after the fire alarm was triggered,” he said.

The fire would go on to leave the auditorium engulfed in smoke, but there was no stampede-kind of situation, said Prakash.

Simultaneously, for safety’s sake, the occupants of the other two auditoriums were also evacuated, said fire officers, although they couldn’t immediately share the figures of the strength of the two auditoriums.

“The cinema staffers used their available smoke exhaust machines to remove the smoke, a process that took over an hour. In the meantime, we searched the hall to see if everyone had vacated it and if anyone had fallen unconscious inside,” said Prakash. The fire fighters had to use breathing apparatus sets to go about the search operation in the smoke-filled hall, he said.

“The public and the cinema staff cooperated with us to make it easy for us,” he said.