Kolkata, Sep 6 — : A devastating fire broke out at a closed chemical factory at Chitpur in North Kolkata on Sunday afternoon. No casualty was reported till the time the report was filed, however, panic gripped the people and the locality because of the intensity of blaze.
A total of 10 fire tenders rushed to the spot and started the fire fighting exercise on a war-footing.
It is learnt that a fire broke out at the chemical factory around 12:30 p.m. on Sunday. Since there were many chemicals stored in the closed chemicals factory, the fire started spreading quickly. There are many other factories in the adjacent area, having inflammable items stored there.
A general apprehension prevailed that the fire could spread to the adjacent location. However, the situation remains largely in control for now as no casualty or extensive damage has been reported so far.
“Our primary aim is to restrict the fire within the particular closed factory premises and prevent that from spreading to other adjacent factories. In addition, the area where the factory is extremely congested and the approach-ways are very narrow. This is an additional hurdle for extinguishing the fire at the earliest. But we are trying to bring the fire under control as early as possible,” a state fire services department present at the spot said.
First, the firemen tried to extinguish the fire by pumping water supplied from outside through hosepipes. At the same time, the work of removing chemicals stored in the factory also started simultaneously.
After some effort, the firefighters were able to reach the source of the fire. It is still unclear how the fire started.
“Initially, it seems that the source of fire was the highly inflammable chemical stored within the factory,” said the fire services department official.
Recently, West Bengal witnessed two major hotel fire incidents last month killing a total of 18 persons, nine in each case.
The first incident was at “Hotel Bideshini” at Tarapith in Birbhum district, which killed a total of nine persons. The second incident was at “Hotel Shikha Inn” at Mirza Ghalib Street in Central which again killed nine persons, including seven Bangladeshi residents.