Gurugram: 4-bedroom flat on 10th floor gutted in fire

GURUGRAM: A fire broke out at a four-bedroom flat on the 10th floor of a residential society in Sector 52 on Friday night, gutting it completely except for a washing machine that stood in one corner of the balcony. While the family blamed the fire brigade for arriving at the scene over an hour later, the firemen said they were there within four minutes of getting the first call from the society.
Around 10pm, when 75-year-old Major General Satish Kumar Sejpal (retired) and his wife, Rani Sejpal (71), were watching TV, they heard a thud. “I ignored the sound and thought that some transformer on the roadside must have sparked as it usually happens. But as I rose to enter the kitchen, I saw the fire in the balcony. I immediately poured some water but couldn’t put out the fire,” he told TOI on Saturday.
The retired soldier firmly held his wife’s hand, switched off the main electricity supply and took the elevator to the ground floor. “Alerting the guards was of no use as they didn’t have adequate fire extinguishers and were not trained enough to help in the process.”
The residents of the society, however, soon gathered and calls were made to the fire department. “It took the fire tenders more than an hour to reach the spot. We made a call to the Sector 29 station at 10.15pm, but the fire brigade reached around 11.35pm. Till the time the fire tenders reached, the entire house was engulfed in flames,” Sejpal alleged.
“I went back to the flat this morning to see if I could salvage something. I haven’t told my wife yet. She will be shocked. We have to start from scratch now. We don’t even have spare clothes to wear,” the retired soldier said.
Some nine fire tenders from the Sector 29 station were rushed to the spot. The distance from the fire station in Sector 29 to the apartment complex is barely 4.4 kms, nearly 15 minutes by the clock.
Another resident, Pradeep Mahajan, who had gathered along with others, corroborated. “The fire brigade came at a time when the entire house was gutted. First they came late and second, they had only one hydraulic vehicle and took around half an hour to set that up. During the fire, time is the only thing that matters,” he said.
However, the fire department refuted the accusations. Gulshan Kalra, deputy director, fire department, said that the fire tenders had reached the spot within four minutes of receiving the call. “They are lying. We had sent out the fire tenders on time and it took us an hour to extinguish the flames,” he said.