‘Water sprayed on fire may have spread blaze’

| TNN | Sep 21, 2018, 06:01 IST
Police and forensic officials inspect the streetlight junction box on Thursday morningPolice and forensic officials inspect the streetlight junction box on Thursday morning
KOLKATA: The first four hours of firefighting at Bagri Market did more harm than good in containing the fire on early on Sunday, forensic officials implied on Thursday.



According to them, the explosion of the deodorant cans in the makeshift stall outside the Bagri Market released inflammable propane and isobutane that are insoluble in water. Even the building housed several shops that stored deodorant cans.

“These liquids float on the water. So the more water the firemen used to douse the blaze, the more the chemicals spread and so did the fire,” said a senior forensic official after completing a two-hour-twenty-minute long inspection of the fire-ravaged building on Thursday morning. Propane is a flammable hydrocarbon gas that is liquefied through pressurization and is mixed with other gases like butane and is used as a propellant in a deodorant can.

A team of eight forensic officials came to the site around 12.30pm and headed straight to the seat of the fire – the electrical pole and a streetlight junction box, maintained by the electrical wing of KMC, outside Gate C of the market. The officials asked the DMG personnel to cut through the burnt junction box and collected samples and voltage readings from the box. They then took out the electrical meter from the store beside it that, too, was gutted in the fire.

“As per preliminary investigation, it looks like the fire started from the streetlight junction box. It looks like there was a sudden surge in voltage that caused an electrical fire, which set the makeshift stall afire and then spread to the market,” said the official. TOI was the first to point out the cause of fire. Officials said prima facie it appeared that the fire was accidental. “There is prima facie no evidence of any sabotage. But we need to inspect the samples in detail to finalize the cause and source of the fire,” said the official, adding samples have been collected from all floors.

The officials, along with policemen and DMG personnel, then entered the Bagri Market through Gate G and inspected each of the six floors.

“On day two of the fire, we could not enter the building due to the immense heat. But on Thursday, we found that the heat had subsided. However, there are still some portions where the temperature is hovering between 40°C and 50°C,” the official said. Officials said the combustible-gas detector showed there were elements of such gases still present in pockets. “Even a small spark is enough to cause a fire inside the market,” a source said.

Meanwhile on Thursday, while cooling the building and looking for fire pockets, a 32-year-old fireman was injured after falling from the iron ladder inside a gutted shop on the second floor of the building. Animesh Biswas, the team leader of the Central Avenue fire station suffered rib injuries and was admitted at an Alipore hospital.
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