Other States - Orissa

Alert pavement dwellers avert major fire

Photo: Lingaraj Panda

Owners of the electrical appliance shop trying to salvage whatever they could from the remains after a fire destroyed the shop at Giri market in Berhampur on Friday. —

BERHAMPUR: The Giri Market complex at the heart of the city escaped from a major fire on Thursday night due to alertness of the homeless people, who slept near it.

However, a big showroom of household appliances and electrical goods on the ground floor was completely gutted.

According to assistant fire officer Trinath Sahu, who led the fire brigade team to extinguish the fire, the total lossmight be more than Rs. 20 lakhs.

The fire personnel had to fight for seven hours to put out the fire. Mr Sahu said major loss could be avoided only due to speedy action of the people, who were sleeping near the market at night.

Electrical short circuit was suspected to be the cause of the fire.

At around 2 a.m. the people sleeping in the open near the market complex saw smoke coming out of a showroom.

They immediately called up the fire brigade. The first work of the fire brigade was not to let fire spread out as most of the portions of this market complex is used by apparel wholesalers to keep their stock, which is highly inflammable.

The fire officials managed to keep off the flames from spreading.

They had a hard time as unplanned growth and development of this old market complex has left little space to fight fire in case of an accident.

Added to it most establishments in this complex did not have proper fire safety equipment. Berhampur MLA Ramesh Chandra Chyau Patnaik visited the spot to take note of situation.

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