Two separate incidents of fire in state

A fire broke out in the zonal office of a nationalised bank on Middleton Street in central Kolkata on Sunday afternoon.

Four fire tenders were pressed into service to douse the flames with the firefighters taking around an hour to extinguish the fire.

The firefighters are yet to ascertain the exact reason behind the fire but they suspect that an electric short circuit might have led to the fire.

The fire initially started in the server room of the zonal office and spread fast. Residents of an adjacent highrise saw smoke billowing out of windows of the bank and informed the police.

Policemen and firefighters went to the spot and started dousing the flame. There was no one in the bank as it was a Sunday. The flames also threatened to spread to the adjacent building, forcing its residents to escape to the ground floor. The firefighters, however, extinguished the fire before it could spread further. The bank officials also went to the spot.

In another incident at Uluberia in Howrah, several shops were gutted in a devastating fire in the wee hours of Sunday. Two fire tenders were pressed into service and water was also pumped in from an adjacent pond by the fire fighters. The reason behind the fire is yet to be ascertained.

Early on Sunday, local people discovered that fire broke out in a shop.

Within minutes it spread to three other adjacent shops and a godown packed with valuable goods. All the four shops and the godown were gutted which led to a loss of around Rs 4 lakh.

A firefighter said that the fire spread fast as the shops and the godown was packed with inflammable goods.