Goof-up By Operator Leads To 9 Mins Delay
The nearest fire tender was located less than 100 metres at a fire outpost from the FSL building
By : Syed Omar Farooq
Update: 2026-02-07 20:44 GMT
Hyderabad: The fire control room is equipped with an active automated GPS system that gives the operator the location of the fire station nearest to the place from where a fire is reported. However, on Saturday, when the operator received a report about the fire in the FSL building, he directed a response from the fire outpost in Assembly which is 2 km away, resulting in a nine-minute delay in response time.
As per the fire department records, a fire call was received at Main Fire Control Room at 10.21 am, and the first fire tender was rushed from the Legislative Assembly fire station and reached FSL at 10.29 am.
The fire services said an internal inquiry has been launched on the reasons for why its control room staff directed the fire tender from Assembly instead of doing so with one stationed much closer to the FSL building.
The nearest fire tender was located less than 100 metres at a fire outpost from the FSL building. This had two fire tenders loaded with 8,000 litres of water each and eight fire fighters. This was not activated and instead the one at Assembly was directed to take up the fire-fighting operation.
Five fire tenders and one fire-fighting robot with 33 firefighters battled the blaze for two hours and put it out by 12.30 pm. “With thick smoke emanating from the rooms where the fire burnt, our fighters split into two teams with one entering from the main entrance while the other went down from the second floor. We had to use heavy smoke exhausters to throw the thick smoke,” Azeera Sreedas, district fire officer, Secunderabad, told Deccan Chronicle.
K Shilpavalli, the Khairatabad zone deputy commissioner of police who visited the scene said “preliminary investigations revealed the fire started following a short circuit in the electricals in one of the rooms, Some computers were burnt and it will take some time to figure out which files were destroyed. Four FSL employees were present when the fire broke out, no one was injured in the fire, the case is under investigation.”
According to M. Sudhakar, an eyewitness, security guard at the adjacent Niloufer Hospital parking lot, he noticed the fire at around 9.35 am and saw some some FSL employees running out of the front gates.