Fire broke out in Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) office near Cubbon Park in the early hours of Thursday, destroying a huge quantity of files and furniture.
Six fire tenders raced to the BSNL office, also called Telephone House, and put out the fire in an hour.
The security staff had noticed thick smoke billowing from the third floor of the six-storey building around 4.30 a.m. But they did not know the Fire Services emergency number (101) and sought the help of employees of a Bescom substation, who called fire control. It was already around 6.20 a.m. then, an official of the Fire and Emergency Services said.
Fire Services officials suspect an electric short-circuit or an electric coil stove on the premises could have been the source of the blaze.
A BSNL statement said the amount of damage was being assessed by an internal committee.
Principal general manager P. Nagaraju said the fire was restricted to only one of the 20 workstations on the floor. “A couple of old computers and files pertaining to ISO standardisation were burnt. The files can be regenerated,” he said, and added that the damage would not impact operations.
