Firefighters rescue 18 from a burning Daryaganj building

A team of fire fighters from Delhi Fire Service saved the lives of 18 persons who were stuck in their five-storey residential building in Daryaganj after a car in the ground floor parking caught fire, blocking the only way out during the early hours of Friday.

While residents on the first and second floors were made to jump on the mattresses, others stuck on the floors above had to be tied with a rope and were brought down through a ladder. No casualties were reported in the incident.

According to the chief fire officer, Atul Garg, the control room received a call reporting the fire at 1.40am on Friday. When a team from Daryaganj fire station reached the spot, they found that a BMW carparked on the ground floor of the building was engulfed in flames, Garg said. Four other cars and two two-wheelers were also parked there but had not caught the fire.

Garg said that the team realised that at least 15-18 people are trapped in the building, and therefore called for additional manpower.

Manoj Kumar Sharma, assistant divisional officer from the Connaught Place fire station who was also rushed to the spot to manage the rescue operation, said since the fire was in the front of the building, we put a ladder on the rear and our men got onto its first floor.

“Our men rushed into the house and took out all the mattresses which we rolled out on the ground floor. As the fire was yet to spread to the first floor, the occupants were asked to come down to the first floor and were made to jump on the mattresses. However, we had only rescued seven-eight people when we realised that the fire has reached the first floor through a shaft,” said Sharma, in-charge of the rescue operation.

The remaining occupants of the building were then taken to the fourth and fifth floor. “While some of them were made to exit the building through the ladder, some had to be tied with a rope and were brought down. It took us a little more than an hour to rescue all 18 occupants of the building,” Sharma said.

Garg said that the fire could have led to a major disaster but the staff from the Daryaganj fire station acted quickly and six fire tenders were rushed to contain the blaze. “While seven-eight of our men were rescuing the occupants, others tried to put off the fire,” he said.

Pradeep Soni, who lives on the third floor of the building, said that he and his wife along with their two children had managed to get onto the terrace of an adjacent building to save themselves. “Since the fire fighters had managed to control the fire, we could easily get out of the building. However, till then the building got full of the smoke and others got stuck. The fire fighters did a commendable job,” said Soni.

He said that the fire had sparked from an electricity metre installed on the ground floor where all the vehicles are parked

First Published: May 18, 2019 07:42 IST