A footwear factory in North West Delhi’s Keshavpuram was gutted early on Sunday morning, the Delhi Fire Service (DFS) said. Though there were no casualties, products and machines worth several lakhs of rupees were burnt and permanently damaged.
The fire department said they had to dispatch 28 fire tenders to control the blaze. It took the fire fighters over two hours to completely douse the flames.
Short-circuit is suspected to have started the fire. However, nothing could be said with certainty and various possibilities are being looked into, said a police officer. It is also being checked if the factory had the necessary licenses to operate and whether they were complying with the fire safety norms, the officer added.
The DFS received a call at around 6.15 am that a footwear factory in Keshavpuram’s Lawrence Road had gone up in flames. The fire started on the ground floor of the two-storey building and quickly spread to the first floor.
Since the fire broke out during the morning hours, there were no employees at the factory. A security guard noticed the fire and raised an alarm. The combustible raw materials used in manufacture of footwear helped the flames spread quickly.
Earlier this week, a 62-year-old man was charred to death and seven members of a family suffered burn injuries in two separate incidents of fire.
The blaze that left one dead was reported from north Delhi’s Civil Lines area during the wee hours of Thursday. The victim Narendra Singh Rawat lived alone in a single room on the third floor of a residential building. Rawat worked as a domestic help at the home of one of the residents of the building.
In another blaze, apparently caused by a leaking gas cylinder, a woman and her six children were injured in outer Delhi’s Narela.
All the injured children, that include four girls and two boys, are aged between five and 15. The only injured adult is their mother Nazreen. Her husband Ayyub escaped as he was out of home at the time of the accident.
The victims told the police that the blaze was ignited when Nazreen lit a candle in the kitchen. It is suspected that a small cooking gas cylinder in the kitchen had been leaking all the while and lighting the candle helped ignite the flames.
The flames immediately spread through the house, leaving the woman and her children injured. The DFS arrived at the scene to control the blaze and rescue the victims. They were rushed to Maharshi Valmiki Hospital from where they were referred to Lok Nayak Hospital.
