Bangla fire kills 108

A devastating fire spread through several apartment complexes in Dhaka, killing at least 108 people and injuring more than 100 others, officials and local media said Friday.
Fire official Nazrul Islam said the blaze started when an electric transformer exploded late on Thursday, igniting a three-story apartment building in the Najirabazar area of old Dhaka. He said the blaze then spread to other buildings where 87 charred bodies were later recovered.
He said some injured people might have died later on the way to hospital or while there, but could not give an exact figure.
Citing officials at the scene and hospital doctors, ATN Bangla television station reported that at least 108 people had died, and that more than 100 others were injured.
"It has caused a huge devastation," Islam said.
He said the firefighters had the blaze under control and that a rescue operation was continuing Friday morning.
He said the victims included many guests of a wedding party on the roof of a building.
Bangla Vision TV station quoted unnamed fire officials as saying the fire spread to at least 20 apartment complexes.
TV footage showed firefighters and residents carrying injured by tricycle rickshaws to hospitals while many relatives of the victims were wailing.
At the state-run Dhaka Medical College Hospital, medical staff struggled overnight to treat the injured as overwhelmed relatives and family members gathered there.
"I haven't seen such a scenario in my 40 years of career," Shamanta Lal Sen, the hospital's burns unit chief, told reporters.
Bangla Vision said the rescue effort was being hampered since the area is crammed with buildings and roads are narrow.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed her shock at the incident and condolences to the families of the victims, and ordered authorities to provide all medical support to the injured.
Authorities have ordered an investigation.

Goods train catches fire as Maoists blast rail line

At least 15 diesel tankers caught fire when suspected Maoists derailed a goods train by blasting the railway track and then set afire one of the tankers in Bihar's Motihari district, a railway official said on Thursday.
The Maoists targeted the diesel tankers on the goods train between Jeevdhara and Pipra railway stations in Motihari, about 200 km from here. "The goods train driver and guard informed us that suspected Maoists set afire an oil tanker. After that fire spread to other tankers," the east central railway chief public relation officer, Mr Dilip Kumar told IANS over telephone. A local police official said that the fire was still raging. "The fire is massive and we will have to wait for the fuel to burn out," he said. Meanwhile, train services have been disrupted in north Bihar as the main track has been blocked, sources in the railways said.

Stephen Court fire toll rises to 34

The toll in the Stephen Court fire here on Sunday rose to 34 as one more body was found under the rubbles in the fifth floor of the fire-raged building.

Fire brigade sources said the decomposed body was recovered from under the debris in the fifth floor and it has been sent to the SSKM Hospital for postmortem.

“The charred body is beyond recognition and we cannot say even whether it is male or female,” the sources said.

Meanwhile, a family from Jharkhand has lodged a complaint with the police, saying a member of it has been missing from Tuesday, the day the fire broke out.

The family said in the complaint lodged on Saturday night that Vineet came to the city to appear in an examination at Stephen Court on that day and did not return.

Following this complaint, the number of missing persons relating to the fire rose to three.

“There is every possibility that some bodies are still there under the debris. But the condition of the bodies is very very bad. The bodies cannot be pulled out unless the entire debris is cleared,” said a senior police officer.

The Kolkata Municipal Corporation workers working round the clock have to be very careful in clearing the debris and that was why it was taking so much time, a KMC official said.

“Nearly 75 per cent of the work of removing the rubble is finished and the rest will be done tonight. So there is a possibility that some bodies might be recovered tonight,” the KMC official said.

To clear the confusion regarding identification of bodies, a notice was put up at the State-run SSKM Hospital yesterday.

According to the notice, 29 bodies had been found of which 16 had been disposed off. Of the 13 remaining, DNA tests have been conducted on four and the same would be done on the remaining nine tomorrow.

Hospital superintendent D. Bhattacharya told PTI that DNA tests generally took time.

Twitter to the fore in telling news

The idea that social media may replace traditional news sources in the age of Web 2.0 has never been more real. When software professional Kiran Jonnalagadda, trapped in the smoke-filled fifth floor of the Carlton Towers in Bangalore, wrote on the micro-blogging site Twitter about his experience, he instantly became the primary source of information for many.

This included traditional news sources such as newspapers and television channels who were still on their way to the spot. Tweeple – twitter parlance for micro-bloggers – re-tweeted his messages about the fire, links to photographs that he was updating real-time using GPRS and witty appeals to friends to stop calling him in panic.

Mr. Jonnalagadda, who works at a start-up, Development Enable, told The Hindu that he walked out safe at around 5.30 p.m. after spending nearly an hour waiting for help. Photos he took with his mobile phone were re-tweeted extensively and even published by news sites. His twitter handle is @jackerhack.

Confirming his tweets, he said that he saw at least seven people jump out of the sixth and seventh floors in panic. Four of them simply landed on the concrete, but it was too smoky to make out. “Carlton Towers is burning and six of us are trapped inside. The fire’s above but there’s smoke everywhere. Saw people jump to their death,” he tweeted. His friends and random twitter followers wrote back conveying their best wishes.

"More stressful than the fire itself"

His regular updates on the situation included facts about how the ladder could not reach his floor, and how the entire region was swarmed with people who had gathered around the premises. Minutes after he had walked out of the site, he said over the phone: “We heard a fire alarm at around 4.30 p.m. and assumed it is one of those annoying drills. A minute later we heard there was smoke. We didn’t know where the fire was. It seemed to be coming from above us. So we pulled out the plug points and tried to run out through our door. But we couldn’t because of the thick smoke coming from our floor. We had to wait for a long time before the fire brigade came up. By then, the smoke seemed to have cleared and we rushed down the stairs.”

Of course, with little access to the survivors, he had to spend the rest of the evening taking calls from mediapersons and narrating the experience. Exhausted, he tweeted later on Tuesday night: “All this media attention is being a lot more stressful than the fire itself!”

Twitter was inundated with tweets from Bangaloreans who tweeted about the tragedy, the news reports that they were watching on television and even about traffic restrictions in and around the area.

Bangalore high-rise fire kills nine

Nine people died at the fire that broke out at Carlton Towers, near the Indiranagar Flyover, here on Tuesday evening. These include six men and three women.

Seven of them were brought dead to the Manipal Hospital, situated near the building.

All of them are people who panicked and jumped out of the windows of the seven-storey building. According to hospital sources, 68 people have been hospitalised and as many as 15 of them are critically injured.

Three of those reported injured are Fire and Emergency Services personnel.

The medical director of Manipal Hospital, Dr. Ballal said they heard of the accident at around 5 p.m., following which medical and paramedical staff were dispatched with about 1,000 emergency masks.

The list of the deceased persons, released by the hospital, is as follows:

Savitha, Benzi Shanthakumar, Rajesh Subramaniam, Surabhi Joshi, Purohit Madan, Sunil Iyer, Fayaz Pasha, Akhil Uday and Siddharth Padam.

Their identities were ascertained from the identity cards and name plates, hospital sources said. Bodies of the deceased have been shifted to Victoria and Bowring Hospital for autopsy.

Dr. Ballal also said none of the injured has burns. "Several people in the Intensive Care Units currently require lung support. Most of them who came in suffered from asphyxiation due to thick smoke."

Exit doors locked

Rakesh Ramachandran, part of a fire rescue team said the exit doors on every floor were locked. He rushed to Carlton Towers upon receiving a call from his friend who was trapped in the building. The locked doors made it impossible for people to use the stairs that led to the ground floor, he claimed. Along with seven others from his team, he broke the locks on six such exit doors, thereby enabling many people to use the escape hatch. "We were shocked to see that these doors, that are critical exit points at such times, were kept locked. It took us nearly an hour to reach the fourth and fifth floor where many were trapped."

Mr. Ramachandran also alleged that the fire tenders that arrived first were low on pressure.

The fire broke out around 4 p.m. creating panic among the people trapped inside the building.

Panic grips trapped persons

Noticing smoke coming out of the top storeys of the seven-floor building that also houses a number of popular restaurants and companies, passersby alerted the Fire Department. Trapped persons broke open the glass window panes of the top storey in panic.

Seven fire tenders were pressed into service to extinguish the fire. Initial reports said nine people were rescued including four who complained of breathlessness. Ambulances from the nearby Manipal Hospital rushed the rescued persons to the hospital. Fire Force personnel claimed the fire had been completely doused by 6.15 p.m.

According to the Fire Force personnel, the fire could have broken out from either the canteen or through the air-conditioner’s duct. They said the absence of proper ventilation in the building aggravated the situation adding to the panic. Meanwhile, traffic was disrupted as large crowds of anxious onlookers gathered below the building.

Twitter tells the tale

Employees stuck in the building wrote about the fire and their experience on the micro-blogging site Twitter. Kiran Jonnalagadda, a software employee working at a start-up, Development Enable, on the fifth floor of the building, spoke to The Hindu after being rescued. He said he saw at least four people jump out of the floors in panic. "People were screaming asking us to stay put and not jump out," he said.

"We heard a fire alarm at around 4.30 p.m. and assumed it is a drill. A minute later we heard there was smoke. So we pulled out the plug points and tried to run out through our door. But we couldn’t because of the thick smoke coming from our floor. We had to wait for a long time before the fire brigade came up. By then, the smoke seemed to have cleared and we rushed down the stairs."

Fire Tragedy out at Bangalore's Carlton Towers

HELP LINE NUMBER == (0120) 305100

A fire broke out at the Carlton Towers on Old Airport Road near the Indiranagar Flyover on Tuesday evening at around 4 p.m. creating panic among people trapped inside the building.

Noticing smoke coming out of the top storeys of the seven-floor building that also houses a number of popular restaurants and companies, passersby alerted the Fire Department. Trapped persons broke open the glass window panes of the top storey in panic.

Seven fire tenders were pressed into service to extinguish the fire. Initial reports said nine people were rescued including four who complained of breathlessness. Ambulances from the nearby Manipal Hospital rushed the rescued persons to the hospital. Fire Force personnel claimed that the fire had been completely doused by 6.15 pm.

According to the Fire Force personnel the fire could have broken out from either the canteen or through the air-conditioner’s duct. They said the absence of proper ventilation in the building aggravated the situation adding to the panic. Meanwhile, traffic was disrupted as large crowds of anxious onlookers gathered below the building.

Meanwhile, employees stuck in the building wrote about the fire and their experience on the micro-blogging site Twitter. Kiran Jonnalagadda, a software employee working at a start-up Development Enable on the fifth floor of the building, spoke to The Hindu after being rescued. He said that he saw at least four people jump out of the floors in panic. “People were screaming asking us to stay put and not jump out,” he said.

“We heard a fire alarm at around 4.30 p.m and assumed it is a drill. A minute later we heard there was smoke. So we pulled out the plug points and tried to run out through our door. But we couldn’t because of the thick smoke coming from our floor. We had to wait for a long time before the fire brigade came up. By then, the smoke seemed to have cleared and we rushed down the stairs.”