The houses belonging to Hiralal Puri, Keshav Dahal, Dan Bahadur Magar, Rabidhwaj Rai and Harka Bahadur Rai of Diktel municipality ward number two were reduced to ashes, DSP Bidyananda Majhi of the District Police Office (DPO), Khotang informed.
A cloth shop, three mobile shops, two hotels, a salon, a beauty parlor and a tailor shop among other shops were destroyed by the fire, DSP Majhi informed.
The DPO's preliminary estimates put the loss of valuables worth millions of rupees. Actual loss of the properties of businessmen and renters along with house owners remained to be calculated. No human casualties were reported in the incident.
Locals and security personnel of Nepal Police, Armed Police Force, and Nepal Army jointly struggled for about three hours to douse the inferno with the help of a fire brigade. The fire had started from a cloth shop belonging to Hiralal Puri at around 3 pm.
After a big flame appeared all of a sudden, he came to learn about the fire upstairs, victim Puri told Republica. “I smelt something burning. I looked inside and outside of the house. But the fire had broken upstairs,” he said.
Diktel bazaar locals were terrified after the fire broke out. To prevent the fire, the roofs and ceilings of nearby houses were removed, Acting Chief District Officer Dinesh Kumal informed. Likewise, DSP Majhi said that lack of fire extinguishers in the shops also caused a big loss of properties.
Dozens of locals, including Puri, who had rented rooms in the house for businesses, are now displaced and freezing cold has added to their woes.
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