Two senior fire officers were killed and six others injured when a portion of a four-storey building collapsed at the congested Kalbadevi in south Mumbai after a major fire swept through the structure. The two senior fire officials –SW Rane, assistant divisional fire officer, and MM Desai, station officer – were killed in the mishap. They were among the four officers trapped under the debris of the collapsed building.
Official sources said that a portion of the Gokul Niwas building collapsed, when the fire brigade personnel were trying to extinguish the massive fire that had broken out in the structure at 4.29 pm on Saturday. In all four fire brigade officials had been trapped in the burning building. Of the trapped, two officers –Sunil Nesrikar, Chief Fire Officer and Sudhir Amin, deputy fire officer, were rescued from the debris. While Nesrikar sustained 57 per cent burn injuries, Amin suffered 80 per burn wounds. Both the officers have been admitted to a hospital at Airoli in Navi Mumbai.
Besides, four more persons –all residents of the affected building – suffered minor injured in the mishap. They were treated at the state-run J J Hospital and allowed to go. Twelve fire engines, an equal number of water tenders and a host of fire brigade personnel were involved in the fire extinguishing operations which lasted for more than seven hours.
Saturday’s was the fourth major blaze in Mumbai metropolitan area in which fire brigade personnel were killed or suffered injuries during an extinguishing operation. Earlier, a 35-year-old fireman Nitin Baburao Inglekar was killed and 20 of his colleagues were injured while battling a massive blaze that had engulfed the two upper-most floors of a 22-storey commercial building “lotus Business Park” at Andheri in north Mumbai on July 18, 2014.
Earlier on October 18, 2009, six firemen were choked to death on a Diwali day, when they went to rescue residents trapped inside a 14-storey building of the Kalpavriksha complex at Samata Nagar locality at Thane. later, on December 14, 2013, six personnel of the Mumbai fire brigade, including two officers, were injured in a major that broke out in a 26-storey building Mont Blanc” at Camps Corner in south Mumbai.