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3 killed in fire at four-storey residential building in Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh
Two policemen and a fire fighter were also injured in the rescue operation, but they are out of danger, according to the police.
Three women were killed and four others injured in a fire that broke out in a four-storey residential building in north-west Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh on Saturday evening, police said.
Two policemen and a fire fighter were also injured in the rescue operation, but they are out of danger, according to the police.
Atul Garg, director of Delhi Fire Services (DFS), said that the three dead women, aged between 75 and 57, and the four others injured that included two children, were rescued from the top three floors of the building constructed over a 100 square yard plot.
“They were all rushed to a nearby hospital where the three women were declared brought dead. They did not suffer burn injuries and died of asphyxiation,” said Deputy Commissioner of police, Gaurav Sharma.
The blaze has occurred less than a week after a fire tragedy in a building that housed factories in north Delhi’s Anaj Mandi that claimed the lives of 43 people and left another 20 injured.
On Saturday, this was the second major incident of fire in the national capital. At 5 am on Saturday, a plywood factory in outer Delhi’s Mundka was gutted after a fire broke out and also engulfed a bulb-manufacturing unit located opposite to it. Twenty fire tenders were required to control that blaze in which no one was reported hurt. The firemen took about three hours to douse the flames even as the cooling operation continued till late in the afternoon.
In the Shalimar Bagh case, Sharma said that the police were the first responders at the blaze scene, reaching the spot within two minutes of the call made around 6 pm.
Garg said that the fire department rushed eight fire tenders to the spot.
The initial probe, Garg said, has revealed that the fire broke out in the kitchen on the ground floor of the house. “The flat on the ground floor was locked from outside. The fire began in the kitchen and spread to the upper floors, trapping the occupants in those flats,” said Garg.
Garg said that a fireman tried to gain access to the building by breaking an iron grill and a glass window pane, but was left with cuts.
“From the first floor, we rescued an elderly woman who was lying unconscious. The others were rescued from the second and third floors,” said Garg.
