3 fall ill after fire at Salt Lake office

Three people including a woman fell ill when a fire broke out at an office of a mobile network service provider housed in Webel SPT-II building at Salt Lake Sector V early on Tuesday morning, police said. 

Five fire tenders were pressed into service to douse the flames. They took around two hours to bring the situation under control. 

According to the officers of the state fire and emergency services department, the fire broke out at around 6.30 am. Security personnel of the building found the second floor balcony filled with smoke. 

They immediately informed the matter to fire department after they found smoke billowing out form the second floor. 

Security personnel Mousumi Naskar was in the toilet when the incident took place. Another security personnel Partha Sen and a group D staff Mrityunjoy Halder knew that Mousumi was in the toilet and they went inside the office in a bid to rescue her. 

Both of them fell ill before they had managed to reach near the toilet. 

Later firefighters rescued all three of them and they were taken to Bidhannagar Hospital. 

The fire fighters initially faced trouble entering the office and they had to use breathing masks to enter the building. 

Some of them also entered the office room on the second floor using turn table ladders. They broke the glass window panes to let the smoke billow out of the office. 

There was no employee present in the office when the fire broke out. 

Usually the employees come to office at around 9 am every day. But, many others were present in offices on the other floors of the building as the KPOs and BPOs were functional. The building was evacuated soon after the fire threatened to spread to other floors. 

Panic broke out among the employees of other ITeS firms in the same building as they failed to use the elevator to come to the ground floor of the building. Everyone was rescued using the staircases. 

The fire fighters are yet to ascertain the exact reason behind the fire, but they suspect that an electric short circuit in the server room of the office could be the main cause of the fire.

An officer of the state fire department said that it could have led to a major incident of fire, but the fire fighting arrangements in the building has helped a lot to bring the situation under control within a short span of time.