Hyderabad: A major fire broke out at a tyre godown near Sushma Theatre in Vanasthalipuram on Sunday evening. The fire raged for nearly 12 hours before it was doused by the fire department and GHMC teams at around 4.30 pm. No injuries were reported.
Mr B. Sreenaiah, the station fire officer at Hayatnagar, said his team reached the spot within five minutes from receiving the information.
“There was no one at the godown to let us in. The main gate was locked. After a while, we broke it open. A lot of time was wasted because of this,” he said.
Mr Sreenaiah said there were no fire safety precautions at the location.
“We barely had access to the building. We found it extremely difficult to get close to the fire. There were also a lot of cars parked on the road, which meant our fire engines could not be taken near the compound quickly,” he said. The GHMC’s Enforcement Vigilance & Disaster Management and traffic police were asked for assistance.
Since no one had come to remove the cars, the police had to shift them. People living in nearby buildings too were evacuated for their safety.
The fire department deployed seven of its fire engines.
Excavators were employed to demolish the structure.
Mr Sreenaiah said the owner of the godown claims the fire was caused by a stray cracker.
“But this is unlikely. The fire occured in the evening, when no one in the surroundings was bursting crackers,” he said.
Mayor Bonthu Rammohan arrived at the site at around 10 pm and stayed for two hours, coordinating the teams working on dousing the fire. Corporator Vithal Reddy too was present. The fire was quite tricky to contain as every time it seemed like it had been doused, it would spring up again and would move to another part of the godown. Ultimately, the structure had to be demolished. A residential building and a car workshop located nearby sustained some damage.
