Four members of a family were charred to death and several other persons affected when a fire broke out in a thatched cluster gutting around 55 structures here at late Saturday night.
A labourer with his wife and their two sons, aged three years and seven months, were sleeping in their house when the fire erupted at lockpada in the Atharabanki area, Additional Superintendent of Police Madhabananda Sahu said.
About 55 thatched houses belonging to about 25 families were razed in the blaze, which was controlled with the help of two fire tenders, Additional district Magistrate (Paradip) RK Sahu said.
The deceased labourer, Satrughna Mohapatra of Puri and his wife Rina and two children, had moved to the area recently. The victims apparently failed to move out of the house as the fire spread swiftly.
Properties worth about Rs 50 lakh were destroyed in the fire. Besides the local administration, Paradip Municipality Chairperson Manjulata Jena, local Congress leaders Pramod Kishore Jena and environmentalist and trade union leader Sankhanada Behera also distributed foods, clothes, utensils and household items to the surviving victims.
The affected people are mostly labourers working in the Paradip Port and other industrial units in the area and fishermen. Efforts were still on to ascertain the cause of the fire, the police said. The fire is suspected to have spread from a burning mosquito repellant. The unauthorised thatched houses in the colony had come up in the area belonging to the Paradip Port Trust (PPT), officials said.