7 dead, 62 injured in Goregaon SRA bldg fire

A fire broke out in a building developed under the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) in Mumbai, killing seven people and injuring 62. The building, which was constructed in 2006-2007, did not have fire extinguishers. The incident has prompted the chief minister to order a fire audit of all SRA buildings.

Mumbai: Residents of a building developed under Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) in Goregaon West were jolted from their sleep by a fire which broke out in the early hours of Friday. Graded Level-2, it claimed seven lives and left 62 injured.

The 16-year-old building had no fire extinguishers. The incident prompted chief minister Eknath Shinde to order a fire audit of all SRA buildings, as many of them were built before 2006, and not covered by the Maharashtra Fire Services Act, 2006, which mandates high rises to have firefighting systems (Satish Bate/HT PHOTO)

The ground-plus-seven storeyed Jai Bahavani building, in Unnat Nagar, was built on slum land between 2006-2007, after which the former slum residents were rehabilitated here. According to authorities of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the fire erupted between 2 and 3 am, in one of the ground floor shops which had stacks of old clothes. The fire then spread across the parking lot where rags, plywood and other inflammable materials were stored; it entered the meter cabin and thereon, spread to the first floor. Soon all the other floors were filled with thick smoke.

The 16-year-old building had no fire extinguishers. The incident prompted chief minister Eknath Shinde to order a fire audit of all SRA buildings, as many of them were built before 2006, and not covered by the Maharashtra Fire Services Act, 2006, which mandates high rises to have firefighting systems. After visiting the site in the evening, Shinde said, “The state government will appoint a special officer to survey all SRA buildings. Additionally, fire and structural audits will also be carried out.”

It took the fire brigade personnel nearly four hours to douse the fire and evacuate people. The injured were shifted to six different hospitals, five in the vicinity of Goregaon, and Kasturba Hospital, in Chinchpokli, which has a burns ward.

Of the seven dead, two were children, 2 men and 3 women. 14 children were injured in the incident, some as young as two months, such as Manvik Rathod who suffered 15% burns and was shifted to the Kasturba Hospital. Two-year-old Prisha Rathod and 23-year-old Kalpana Rathod were also admitted at the same hospital after they suffered burns.

Dr Chandrakant Pawar, medical superintendent, Kasturba Hospital, said, “All the three patients are stable and under observation. The two-month-old baby is of concern, although he is stable. We have not planned any surgery yet.”

Officials from the civic body said of the 62 injured, 52 continue to remain hospitalised -- five are critical and the remaining 47 stable. They were admitted in HBT Trauma Care Hospital, Cooper Hospital, Kasturba Hospital and other private hospitals.

Chief fire officer, Ravindra Ambulgekar, said the building’s lift was old and a significant amount of smoke travelled through its duct. More than 20 fire fighting vehicles were pressed into service and the fire was doused by 6:55 am.

BMC commissioner Iqbal Chahal, who visited the spot, in the morning, blamed short circuit as the preliminary cause of the fire, and said, “The responsibility of fire safety is on cooperative housing societies, who must have fire audits done regularly and install firefighting equipment. The fire brigade responded to the call in nine minutes. Suffocation, not burn injuries, led to the deaths.” He assured BMC will turn to IIT-B to conduct technical study to avoid such recurrences.

Residents however, refuted the commissioner’s claims about speedy arrival of fire brigade, underscoring “poor fire response”.

When a family on the fifth floor woke up to the smoke, they thought it may have emerged from their fridge. “Soon, my husband and I figured out that the smoke was coming from outside. We opened the door, which aggravated things. We could hear the screams,” said Priti Kumari, who lives here with her husband and two-year-old daughter. In a state of confusion, they called a friend who advised them to sit in a packed room – in their case, the bathroom. The three wrapped themselves in a wet bedsheet and sat close to a window so that their daughter could breathe. By now, she had started vomiting. “We were only concerned about our child, because if she died, we’d be as good as dead even while living,” said the mother.

The family was evacuated after the fire died down.

Sanjay Chaughale, a resident of the first floor, was not as fortunate. He lost his 18-year-old daughter Tisha in the fire, while his mother and wife are being treated in a hospital. “As soon as I heard about the fire, my son and I ran down, while my mother, wife and daughter ran into the opposite flat. We have been living here without any water or fire safety equipment and have been running between the authorities to fix these things,” he said.

Hitting out at the callousness of the government, MLC Kapil Patil said, “Slums are not new in Mumbai. Now a vertical slum called SRA Rehab has been added to it. There are no lobbies or verandas here. The houses are like huts and the doors and windows small. We have trapped the poor in unaffordable multi-storeyed slums.”

Prime minister Narendra Modi has offered his condolences to families who lost loved ones, and announced ₹2 lakh for them, and ₹50,000 for the injured. The chief minister also announced a compensation of ₹5 lakh to the kin of victims and assured free treatment to the injured. Guardian minister Mangal Prabhat Lodha visited the hospitals and said, an expert committee will be formed to assess the cause of the fire and an interim report will be submitted in the next two weeks.