A fire at a shop in Sai Complex, Cement Road near DBS (PG) College here on Tuesday evening destroyed three bikes and properties worth lakhs of rupees.
The shop- Sabharwal Cycle Store, providing services like cycle and scooter repairing, gas welding and small gas cylinder refilling was engulfed in fire due to gas welding. The fire was extinguished after about two hours of efforts by the firemen and no casualty was reported, said Dehradun Fire Station Officer Shiv Prasad Mamgai on Wednesday. The fire was put out before it could spread to neighbouring shops in the complex. One of the shopkeepers said that the firemen succeeded in putting off the fire before it could spread to the gas cylinders stored in one of the shops. “The complex managers had not procured No-Objection Certificate (NOC) from the fire department. and fire safety equipments were not placed in the complex,” said Mamgai.
There are more than a dozen shops in this complex. A kitchen appliance shopkeeper whose shop was adjacent to the Sabharwal Cycle Shop said that the shopkeeper was illegally refilling small gas cylinders. "This shop owner had stored gas cylinders in one of the shops in the complex. God was kind to us and the fire was extinguished before it reached these cylinders. After hearing the blast of three or four cylinders in the shop, around 100 students and other shopkeepers who were in the complex somehow managed to leave the complex safely.
The fire tender had reached the spot after half an hour of the incident. Mamgai said that the fire service was informed about the blaze at Sai Complex around 4 pm on Tuesday. A fire tender reached the spot within half an hour despite heavy traffic at Clock Tower. Initially, the firemen faced difficulties due to blast of cylinders. "Due to the alarming proportion of the fire, senior police officers also rushed to the incident site and with the deployment of four additional fire tenders and around 20 firemen, we somehow managed to bring the fire under control and then extinguish it after fighting the flames for about two hours. Had the complex applied to the Fire Department for NOC, effective fire fighting equipment would have been at the complex apart from which the complex would have had to employ one trained person to work in emergency situation there. The complex was located in a residential area near a college so the shopkeeper was not allowed to store cylinders in the complex as that is illegal. The cost of the damage wreaked by the fire is yet to be estimated. The complex owner had never approached the department for NOC," he added.