Alert truck driver, staff avert major fire disaster

Surat: Timely action by a truck driver and attendants at a petrol pump in the Bhestan area averted a major disaster on Thursday morning.
In the incident that was captured on CCTV cameras, a truck loaded with refilled LPG cylinders caught fire from a spark in the driver compartment during refuelling. However, instead of panicking the driver and petrol pump staff used the presence of mind and reached for fire fighting equipment and doused the blaze on time.
The truck came to the petrol pump at around 7.30am for refuelling. However, even after it filled the tank with diesel, the truck did not start, leading the driver to check for the fault. Suddenly, a fire started in the driver’s cabin which he and the petrol pump staff noticed immediately.
The driver lost no time and jumped inside the cabin to open doors on both sides so that the fire could be controlled from all sides. The petrol pump staff also used powder-based spray fire extinguishers to control the blaze from both sides of the cabin and immediately brought the fire under control.
“It could have led to a major disaster since the truck was carrying refilled gas cylinders and was standing right in the middle of the petrol pump. However, timely action by the petrol pump staff controlled the fire before it could snowball into a catastrophe,” one of the employees at the petrol pump who helped douse the fire told TOI.
“As the truck did not start after refuelling, the driver was trying to locate the fault when the fire started,” said another pump employee.
“The fire department received a call and then another caller soon informed us that the fire had been controlled. The control room ordered us to visit the spot after which we examined and found that the fire was controlled in time,” a fire official said, adding that the fire started in the battery due to some fault in the vehicle.