Chennai: “I am an asthma patient and had to wear a surgical mask for hours to avoid inhaling the smoke. We left the house, once the smoke started spreading and returned only after several hours,” said Deepa Premshankar, who resides on Mangesh Street in T Nagar located opposite Chennai Silks building that witnessed a massive fire accident on Wednesday.
She added that she could not book a cab as by then the traffic was diverted and they had to leave T Nagar immediately. The residents also complained of throat and eye irritation and some maintained that their sleep was disrupted since the fire accident. They rubbished claims of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board that the air pollution is under permissible limits.
Rajendran N, another resident of the same locality said, “We were not able to step out of the house due to the smoke. My daughter who was away was asked to come later, but the auto driver fleeced her by charging extra for the drop to T. Nagar.”
T. Nagar Residents Welfare Association treasurer R. Mohan said, “We shut ourselves inside the house for more than a day, my mother-in-law was discharged from hospital two days before the fire. The air is still not clean and particles are hanging in the air”.
He said that his day-to-day routine has been affected and he could not go to the office and getting out of the house was a nightmare and there were no policemen monitoring the diverted traffic. Metro water lorries could not reach the houses to supply water, he rued.
Meanwhile, the street hawkers opened their stalls on Saturday after being shut for the last 48 hours. Hawkers Salim and Nagaraj admitted that they were financially hit by fire accident and opened their stall on Saturday as they could no longer incur a further loss.
“Customers are scared to come. I opened the shop this afternoon and am yet to receive any customers. Hopefully, the situation will improve” said Geetha, a street hawker selling bangles.
