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Fire at battery charging shop, employee dies
The exact cause of the fire yet to be ascertained, but it looks like the blaze was caused by a battery explosion in the shop, says CFO, Lucknow
LUCKNOW An employee died of suffocation after a massive fire broke out at an e-rickshaw battery charging centre housed below a gym in a four-storey building (SS Tower) near Badshah Nagar Metro station in Lucknow on Tuesday evening.
The deceased, Ashwani Pandey, 35, a resident of Rajajipuram, worked as a manager and perished while rescuing three others in the shop. Fire brigade personnel reached the site, pulled Ashwani out of the shop and sent him to the Civil Hospital, where he died during treatment, said Mahanagar police.
The exact cause of the fire was yet to be ascertained, but it looked like the blaze was caused by a battery explosion in the shop, said Mangesh Kumar, CFO, Lucknow.
As many as 10 fire tenders from areas including Indira Nagar, BKT, Chowk, PGI and Alambagh rushed to the spot and the fire was brought under control after two hours of rigorous efforts, said the CFO.
As many as 25 people, including five women, were trapped in Olympia Gym on the fourth floor of the building, after the flames from the battery shop spread out. “As the stairs of the building were congested, firemen broke the glass panes of the building to rescue the 25 people trapped,” informed the CFO, adding that a fireman Mithun Patel was injured during the rescue operations.
According to witnesses, the fire started broke out at 5:45pm. The presence of a petrol pump in the neighbourhood triggered panic among. When the petrol pump personnel saw the fire, they attempted to control it with fire extinguishers and informed the police and the fire department.
The battery charging station situated on the ground floor was said to have been run by four people. Of these, three managed to escape, but Ashwani who was in the rear of the shop, got trapped in the smoke and died later, said the CFO.
