Residents of the narrow lanes in the thickly populated Charminar locality in Hyderabad’s Old City woke up on Sunday morning to the smell of smoke. A in the early hours of the day, leaving 17 members of a family, including eight children, dead.
The first call to the fire force was made at 6.16 am, and the first fire engine was dispatched just a minute later, said Y Nagi Reddy, the Director General of Fire Safety. However, residents say the fire must have been blazing for some time before those on the outside even got to know.
When rescuers started looking for survivors, local residents who tried to help them said there was “not a sound coming from the building other than the crackling of flames”.
“It was so ominous that there were no calls for help. Everyone inside was silent,” said Zubhan, a small retailer in the area.
Another local resident, Zaman, said, “In the morning, we woke up to the smell of smoke emanating from the building.”
“The fire engines were already at the spot and we could see that the blaze was raging on the first floor,” he said.
A senior rescue official told that the first batch of firefighters sent to the spot were not able to bring the blaze under control on their own and that more units were then pressed into action.
The rescue efforts were complicated by the fact that there was just one staircase that led to the floors above ground.
“The staircase was just one metre wide and was filled with smoke. There was no alternate exit to the building, and the ground floor’s entrance was completely blocked by bikes parked there. Fuel from these bikes, too, added to the fire,” Fire Safety DG Nagi Reddy said in a statement.
Firefighters then used the Advanced Fire Robot and the Skylift hydraulic platform to douse the flames. That was when they saw more scenes of horror inside.
Zubhan said, “The fire tenders were shouting that there were bodies in each of the rooms above. In one room, there was a mother and two children who had been trapped.”
Fire officials said that as per preliminary findings, the blaze was likely to have started on the ground floor, which housed a jewellery store that was closed for the night, due to a short circuit.
“The fire must have quickly spread to the first floor where the family was living. We have assessed that the blaze spread at around 3-4 am,” a fire tender said.
By around 10 am, the spot was teeming with people. “By 10.30 am, we had already removed 17 unconscious people from the building. All of them were declared dead at different hospitals in the city,” a senior fire official said.
Firefighters said that if the blaze had not been brought under control when it was, it would have gutted other buildings. The Telangana Chief Minister’s Office said 40 people from nearby buildings were rescued by fire tenders after putting out the blaze in the first building.
By Sunday afternoon, ministers and public representatives swarmed the Charminar area. Among them were Union Minister G Kishan Reddy, MP , Telangana’s Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka and another state minister, Ponnam Prabhakar.
Owaisi had earlier told media personnel that the deceased family had been living in the same building for several decades. “This is an old family of Charminar,” he said.
Another local resident, Ghouse, said only eight members of the family were permanently living in the building. “The rest had come for summer vacations from other parts of the city,” Ghouse said.
He also said the locals would hold a wake for the family — “It is the least we can do.”
