Chennai: Seventy-two hours after the Chennai Silks building in T Nagar went up in flames, another commercial hub in Chennai at Purasawalkam witnessed a fire accident on Saturday affecting normalcy and traffic.
According to fire and rescue service personnel, the fire broke out in Suntec city shopping complex and the accident was possibly due to an electric short circuit. The fire was doused within an hour.
“Two textile showrooms were completely reduced to ashes and three adjacent shops are partly burnt,” said a police officer adding that there were no casualties.
The owner of the textile showroom went out for lunch and others who saw smoke bellowing from the shop ran out for help, the police said.
Kishore Paul, who runs the clothing shop in the premises, said the fire started around 4 pm and the firemen reached the place in 15 minutes.
“Three fire engines from Kilpauk, Egmore and Vyasarpadi were pressed in to service and they were backed up by metro water lorries to fight the fire. The loss of property is estimated to be around Rs 20,000 and there is no big damage,” said Shahul Hameed, joint director, Fire and rescue services, Northern region.
With over 20 shops in the complex, none of them is equipped with fire safety measures and neither do they have fire safety license nor insurance, fire officials said.
Activist Traffic Ramaswamy, who visited the spot, blamed the authorities and again singled out the housing secretary Dharmendra Pratap Yadav as the reason for all the fire accidents in the city inviting peel of laughter among scribes.
