A fire erupted in one of the rooms of the Disaster Mitigation and Management Centre (DMMC) at the Secretariat on Monday morning destroying computers and other office items said to be relating to the relief operations.
The fire is reported to have been triggered by an electrical short circuit. When the media persons tried to shoot the incident, a DMMC official manhandled the reporter and broke the camera as well. Although media incharge Surender Kumar has apologised for this, it has raised several questons like why they stopped the media from shooting. Were they trying to destroy the disaster relief distribution files under the guise of fire incidentIJ
The fire was extinguished after about half an hour of efforts by the firemen and security guards of the Secretariat and no casualty was reported, said Dehradun Fire Station Officer Shiv Prasad Mamgai.Incidentally, the fire department had trained about 100 security guards including Uttarakhand police and Provincial Armed Constabulary personnel posted at the Secretariat in fire safety management on Saturday.
Mamgai said that fire safety equipments were placed in the building and some security guards who were trained by the department helped the firemen put out the fire soon before it could spread in the Secretariat.He further said, “The fire service was informed about the blaze in one of the buildings of the Secretariat at 8 am. A fire tender was sent and fire was controlled in half an hour. The cost of the damage caused by the fire in the building is yet to be confirmed,” he added.