Gurgaon: Fire in Sadar Bazar extinguished 9 hours later using 24 tenders

A fire in Gurgaon’s Sadar Bazar proved to be a major challenge for personnel of the fire department last night, who struggled for more than nine hours to control and, eventually, extinguish the blaze. Nobody was injured in the incident.

According to officials from the fire department, they received a call regarding the matter at 6.43 pm on Wednesday and immediately pressed a fire tender into service. Although the flames gutted a hardware store and a plywood store in the market, which are located next to each other, officials say it remains unclear in which of the two the fire actually began.

“We had to deploy all the fire tenders in Gurgaon district, including those of Maruti, Honda, and DLF, to manage the situation. By the time our vehicles reached the spot, both the shops were engulfed in flames. The fire kept getting reinforced because of a lot of flammable material inside the hardware store, including boxes of paint,” said IS Kashyap, assistant divisional fire safety officer.

“In all, around 24 vehicles were used, which managed to control the blaze by around 1 am and extinguish it only in the morning, around 4 am…Both the shops were entirely gutted but we managed to prevent the fire from spreading to adjoining structures, and also from reaching the basement of the plywood store, which was full of material. If the fire had reached there, the damage would have been much more,” he said.

Officials said while the hardware store had two floors – ground and first – the plywood store had a basement, ground and first floor. Neither of the two had a fire NOC.

Although the fire department was alerted to the incident at 6.43 pm, officials said fire tenders lost “around 15-20 minutes” reaching the spot because of the congested lanes of Sadar Bazar.

“This happened during the peak hour, so the market was anyway crowded. In addition, there was a lot of panic and confusion because of the fire as well, all of which led to delays in each vehicle reaching the spot,” said Kashyap, adding that, even fifteen hours after the fire first broke out, the reason for it remains uncertain.

“The owners of the plywood store and hardware store are both blaming each other and claiming that the fire broke out in the other’s shop. By the time we reached the spot, both shops were already burning so we do not yet know what caused the fire,” he said.