If not for the officials of the Disaster Response & Fire Services and GHMC’s Disaster Response Force, the fire accident at the scrap godown in Bhoiguda would have easily spread to the adjacent timber and plywood depots.
“This is our duty, but unfortunately, we couldn’t save those 11 workers. Although the first fire tender, kept on COVID-19 duty at Gandhi Hospital, reached the godown at 4:02 a.m., not a cry of help was heard and we thought there was no one inside,” a Fire official said, sharing his disappointment.
The local businesses too, were worried about their stores catching fire and wanted fire tenders to reach them soon, and only when a cluster of cellphone signals were located at the godown, it was discovered that there were occupants inside, the officer said.
It was also the Fire officials who stepped up in recovering the charred bodies, although the training and equipment do not direct the job.
According to Hyderabad District Fire Officer M. Srinivas Reddy, the operation would have been more bitter. “The slab, after reaching through the only spiral staircase entry/exit, where the officers were moving around in the operation, collapsed nearly an hour later,” he said, adding that pungent smelling gases were also a challenge for his teams.
Officials on the ground observed that poisonous fumes from the burning of old cables and wires, and the continued smoke due to insulation material on the wires, just below the victims’ sleeping room, may have caused suffocation, and the fire charred them.
And while the dousing of flames lasted for about two hours, the consequent operations which lasted till about noon were in direct exposure to smoke.
Mr. Reddy said that the Bhoiguda fire accident will have a lasting effect on his team members, just like the 1996 Karimnagar fire accident, the 2012 Baba Nivas apartment fire at Puppalguda and the Attapur’s air cooler factory accident in 2017.
