Eight rescued from building fire in New Friends Colony
Eight people, including four children, two women, and two men, were rescued, and two pet dogs died of suffocation from a residential building in South Delhi’s New Friends Colony on Sunday afternoon after a fire broke out on the first floor and thick smoke blocked the central staircase, trapping residents on upper floors. Fire officials explicitly dismissed reports circulating about a child dying in the incident. No human casualties were reported.
The Delhi Fire Service received a call at around 3:50 pm. Police Station New Friends Colony received a PCR call at around 3:45 pm. A senior police official immediately led a team to house number C-600, where a fierce fire originating from the first floor had produced thick smoke that completely blocked the central staircase, cutting off the escape route for residents above.
Two fire tenders reached the scene promptly. Delhi Police personnel, working in coordination with the fire brigade, used specialised equipment to bypass the blocked staircase and evacuate all eight trapped residents from the five-storey building. The fire was reported from an air conditioner and other domestic articles on the first floor, officials said. While all human lives were saved, “Reports of the death of a child are incorrect,” officials stated clearly.
Police said two pet dogs were found unconscious from smoke inhalation.
“Emergency first aid and CPR were administered at the spot. However, one dog died of suffocation there, while the other was rushed to a nearby veterinary facility but succumbed,” they said. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a life-saving medical procedure used when a person’s heartbeat or breathing stops. It is also applied to animals.
A Delhi Fire official said they rescued two dogs but couldn’t resuscitate them.
The incident comes four days after the June 3 fire at a bed-and-breakfast hotel in Hauz Rani, Malviya Nagar, which killed 21 people, including several foreign nationals, and triggered a city-wide crackdown on illegal constructions and fire safety violations. That fire has placed every building fire in Delhi under heightened public and official scrutiny in the days since.
The New Friends Colony fire, while it resulted in no loss of human life, follows a pattern that fire safety experts have repeatedly flagged: a fire on a lower floor generates smoke that fills internal staircases rapidly, turning what would otherwise be the primary escape route into the most dangerous part of the building.
