Firefighters say sketchy information, congested area delayed rescue operation

Narrow lanes and sketchy information about the nature of fire and the building in north Delhi's Anaj Mandi area delayed fire-fighting when a blaze ripped through the four-storey structure Sunday morning, Delhi Fire Service officials rued. They said the fire department was not informed that people were trapped inside the building and that commercial activity had been going on there as a result of which only four fire tenders were rushed initially. The construct of the building was also not clear to them as the first distress call made at 5.22 am had mentioned a house.

After the first responders reached the site, they realised the scale of the fire and pressed more personnel and extinguishers to douse it, the officials said. It took over 150 firefighters and 35 fire tenders nearly five hours to douse the blaze. The building, spread over 600 sq yards, was an old structure and damaged. Fire department officials said the building was a residential structure but was being used for a commercial purposes.

They said none of the buildings in the area had a fire NOC. Sixty-three people were pulled out of the building. While 43, including one minor, died, 16 survived. Two fire department personnel were hurt during the rescue operation, officials said.

The rescuers undertook four searches to be sure that no one was trapped inside the building. Cooking utensils, like pressure cooker, found at the site suggested the labourers who worked at the manufacturing units also cooked inside the building. Most of the workers were trapped in a hall on the third floor and 3-4 charred bodies were removed from there, said Atul Garg, Fire Director at Delhi Fire Service.

"Initially, four fire tenders were rushed to the spot but later, when we got to know that people were also trapped inside the factory, in total more than 30 fire tender were pressed into action," Garg said. Since the lane was congested, the fire personnel faced difficulty in rushing their vehicles through them. "We rushed in one vehicle while other fire tenders stood outside. With the help of hose pipes and water pumps, the fire-fighters managed to douse the blaze," he said.

According to fire personnel, smoke had filled the second and the third floors of the building and the fire, aided by combustible materials kept in the building, raged, making it difficult for rescuers to enter it. They used gas cutters to cut window grills to open a second entry to the building. Firefighters had to carry people on their back to ambulances parked outside the lanes, as a fire tender which had entered the narrow lane blocked way for other vehicles.

"Sixty three workers trapped inside the building were removed from the premises and rushed to different hospitals across the city. Several units were being operated from each floor of the building. There was two exits but one of them was blocked because materials stacked there," the DFS fire director added. The fire started on the second floor and most of the deaths were caused by asphyxiation, he said.

The building was packed with combustible material including card boards, plastic wrappings, garments, rexin rolls, plastic toys, packaging materials, lunch boxes, sewing machines which caused dense smoke which was inhaled by those trapped in the building, he added. The NDRF team that helped in the rescue operation said the building was filled with hazardous carbon monoxide. After the Delhi Fire Service controlled the fire, the National Disaster Response Force searched the building for hazardous gases with gas detectors, said Aditya Pratap Singh, deputy commander, NDRF.

"We found carbon monoxide (CO). After which we searched the area manually. The entire third and fourth floor of the building was engulfed with smoke. The content of CO was more," he said.

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