Hyderabad: Swift response from the Vanasthalipuram police helped prevent loss of lives, as they successfully rescued 40 workers of a hotel who were asleep in a four-storeyed building that caught fire in the early hours of Wednesday.
The police said that the fire started around 1 am, at a dining hall on the
first floor of the building, which houses the popular Subbayya Gari
restaurant in Chintalmet of Vanasthalipuram. It then spread to the other floors, including the third and fourth, where the hotel workers stayed.
The police said that as per their preliminary investigation, the fire was caused due to a short circuit and that they registered a case in this regard.
Four air conditioners, three styled coolers and furniture worth lakhs of
rupees were gutted in the fire, the police said.
Vanasthalipuram police inspector D. Jalender Reddy said, “We rushed to the
scene, which is over one km from the police station, within eight minutes.
On my way, I alerted the local assistant engineer of TSSPDCL and
firefighters. The TSSPDCL disconnected the power from the transformer and
the high-tension line that was passing in front of the fire-hit building,
following which the firefighters opened their cannons.”
He said that while firefighters were busy, he led two constables, a personal security guard and a night security officer through a staircase through which they reached the third floor.
“We were shocked to see 40 workers deep in sleep on the premises that was
surrounded by black dark smoke from the first and second floor. I woke up M. Srinivas, one of the workers, who was shocked and immediately raised the
alarm among the staff,” Jalender Reddy said.
The workers were asked to hurry down the stairs and were safely rescued to
the backyard of the building, police said.
The police also had to break a large elevation window of the building to
provide firefighters with direct access to the building. The fire was then extinguished within 45 minutes.
Shiva Prasad and Laxmipathi, the managers of the restaurant, thanked the police for rescuing the workers.
“The police did an excellent work by breaking the window glasses that saved
the lives of our workers and helped the firefighters to gain access to
control fire with a minimum damage to our hotel,” Shiva Prasad said.
Laxmipathi said, “If police would have not reacted on time, fire would have
spread to the kitchen where over nine filled gas cylinders were placed. The
scene would have been different.”
