A woman embracing her children in the midst of a blaze was the sight that Sabir caught when he rushed into a building that caught fire in Hyderabad on Sunday morning.
Sabir, who runs a bangle business and lived in the Gulzar House area, was one of the first to respond to the fire that broke out in the building near the iconic Charminar at around 6am. “I managed to get inside shortly after the fire started. There was a huge blast and the fire spread quickly to the upper floors,” he told reporters.
Upon entering the building, Sabir caught the sight of a woman trying to shield her two children from the blaze. “As flames entered the room, I could see a woman hugging her children. She and her children died,” he said.
Sabir was among the many locals that first responded to the tragic fire that claimed the lives of 17 people, including eight children. Preliminary investigations revealed the blaze in the two-storey building was triggered by a short circuit in the shop in the ground floor.
Md Zahid, another local, said that he and his two friends were returning home after early morning prayers when he saw people standing outside the building crying for help. “When I enquired with them, they said their relatives were trapped inside the building which was caught in fire,” he told reporters.
When Zahid got to the building, rescue services had yet to reach the site. He and his friends tried to enter the building through the staircase, but it was completely engulfed in flames. “By taking the consent of the relatives, we broke open the shutter of the shop in the ground floor and managed to entered the first floor, but it was completely filled with smoke,” he said.
Upon reaching the first floor, they found seven people in one room and six in another. “There were women and little kids. We could count only 13 at that time. We were not sure how many of them were in total,” he said.
With the help of police personnel, the trio brought the 13 people out from the burning building in an unconscious state. All 13 of them were later declared dead.
Local fire services were informed about the incident minutes after the fire broke out. “We received the call from the locals at around 6.16am and we immediately despatched the fire tender from Mughulpura by 6.20am,” director general of fire services Y Nagi Reddy said.
However, rescue services were heavily impeded by the narrow by-lanes leading towards the burning building. “The fire tender reached the building quite fast they but they were not able to enter the by-lanes,” said Md Zamir, another local. “By the time, they could start the operation the fire had engulfed the entire building.”
Locals pointed out that the building was over 100 years old, and that the building’s construction was a major bottleneck for rescuers.
Many of the building’s windows were closed at night as air-conditioners were turned on. “In case of a fire, they lead to huge build-up of smoke in the small rooms,” Zamir said. Of the 17 deceased, nine died of burn injuries while the rest died of asphyxiation.
The building also had a single entrance, which made it h arder for the residents to escape. “The main problem is here is only one entrance. A very narrow staircase leads to the first and second floors,” he said. “The staircase is close to the place where the short circuit took place, due to which it was completely filled with smoke and excessive heat. There is no alternative exit staircase or path to the upper floors,”
It took about two hours for 11 vehicles, one fire-fighting robot, and 17 fire officers among 70 rescue personnel to extinguish the fire.