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Short circuit sparks fire at mattress unit, leaves woman dead
While the owner and his son managed to escape soon after the fire broke out, his wife, daughter-in-law and grandkids remained trapped on the first floor; wife was rescued two hours later but was declared brought dead at the hospital
A 55-year-old woman died while valuables worth lakhs of rupees were gutted after a fire broke out at a mattress manufacturing unit-cum-residence located in Chhawani Mohalla on Arya Model Senior Secondary road on Thursday morning.
The deceased has been identified as Harsh Chawla alias Babbli. She was reportedly taking a bath and died due to asphyxiation. Three firefighters also sustained minor injuries while trying to control the blaze.
According to fire department officials, the godown belongs to Charanjit Singh Chawla, whose family lives on the first floor of the building while the second floor houses a mattress manufacturing unit.
The incident took place around 5.30am, when Chawla along with his son Munish Chawla alias Issu opened the godown. As he switched on the power connection, there was short-circuit which led to the mattresses catching fire.
The father-son duo tried to douse the flames but it engulfed the entire godown in no time.
While Charanjit and Issu managed to successfully escape, Issu’s mother Harsh, wife Ayushi, four-year-old son Bittu and six-month-old daughter Gudia got trapped in the house on the first floor.
Charanjit called the fire department and informed them about the incident.
Soon, the area residents and police surrounded the house and started rescue operation. While Ayush and her children were safely evacuated from the house using a ladder, Harsh, who was taking a bath, is suspected to have fallen unconscious due to the flames and smoke.
It took nearly two hours for firefighters to evacuate her following which she was rushed to the civil hospital, where doctors declared her brought dead.
According to assistant fire officer Shrishti Nath, they received a call at 6.05am and rushed to the spot. “At least 35 fire tenders were pressed into service to douse the flames but the mattresses kept in the godown were made of foam, which is a highly inflammable material, and so it took us so long to control the fire.” said Nath.
He further added that there were no fire safety arrangements in the godown.
Due to rescue operations that lasted for over five hours, a traffic jam was also witnessed on the Arya Model Senior Secondary road.
SECOND FIRE TRAGEDY FOR FAMILY
This is not the first that the Chawla family has lost a family member to a fire tragedy. One of the relatives said that in 1982, Charanjit had lost his elder brother Ajit Chawla in a similar fire tragedy.
TWO YEARS ON, NO FIRE AUDIT
It has been over two years since local bodies minister Navjot Singh Sidhu announced a fire safety audit of properties after the horrific plastic factory blaze in 2017 claimed 16 lives, including those of nine firefighters but the audit has still not been completed. Thousands of factories and commercial units in Ludhiana are functioning without a no-objection certificate (NOCs). Though the audit was initiated in March 2018, it was suspended after a month.
At that time, the fire brigade and Ludhiana municipal corporation (MC) officials had claimed that all buildings, including commercial and industrial, will be inspected under the survey and corrective steps will be taken accordingly. The audit team was also supposed to check how many units had been illegally storing highly inflammable material but the survey is still in doldrums.
