Fire reduces garbage yard and hutments to ashes in Manesar

Fire department officials said that the fire had erupted from one of the hutments which soon spread and the garbage yard also went up into the flames.

A fire destroyed at least more than a dozen shanties and a major part of a garbage yard located on an open field on the outskirts of Naharpur village at Sector 86 near IMT Manesar on Saturday morning, fire department officials said.

Officials said that the fire broke out at 10.45am (HT)

Officials said that the fire broke out at 10.45am and the Manesar fire station received the alert at 10.50am. Within five minutes, two fire tenders from the station and one belonging to an automobile manufacturing plant, had reached the spot to douse the fire..

Fire department officials said that the fire had erupted from one of the hutments which soon spread and the garbage yard also went up into the flames.

“By 11.30pm, we had controlled the flames and in the next hour, the fire was completely doused. Firefighters left the spot after waiting for more than an hour to prevent further fire. Each of the three tenders required refill during the operation,” a fire department official said.

Lalit Kumar, fire officer of Manesar fire station, said that either a short circuit or a cooking fire in one of the hutments had spread which resulted in the incident. “A fire department team was incidentally near the location for a mock drill and immediately swung into action,” he said.

Meanwhile, fire officials said that the location is actually a garbage yard spread on a five acres plot where waste generated from households and commercial places are collected and segregated by those living in at least 60 shanties. Last year too, a fire had broken out at the same site which had reduced the garbage to ashes.

Ruchika Sethi Takkar, a member of a group named Citizens for Clean Air, said that they have recorded repeated fires at this very location for more than seven years that too with a pattern of 2-3 times annually.

“Post-monsoon, after the festive season and in March and April the fires were reported. We have filed multiple complaints for lack of implementation of solid and plastic waste management rules along with absence of any proper monitoring but no coercive action has been taken against any officials yet,” Sethi said.

She said it is the systematic failure of the government machinery due to which the common people suffer along with the waste workers as they don’t have any support due to which waste often

“The absence of infrastructure support for waste workers, such as dry waste centers, exacerbates the issue,” she added.

A Municipal Corporation of Manesar (MCM) official said that they will look into the issue of fires erupting at garbage yards. “We will chalk out plans accordingly after roping in those living in shantis and working as segregators,” he said.