The fire that broke out from a tea shop at midnight Tuesday turned into a blaze after it spread to the adjoining gas depot and grocery store causing a material loss of around Rs 2.8 million. [break]
The television set of tea shop owner Ganesh Shrestha caught fire due to high voltage after power, cut off due to load-shedding, resumed suddenly at midnight. “I was asleep. I saw the television set on fire when woke up after feeling the heat,” said Shrestha. “I tried to put it off but had to rush out taking my mother as the television set began to explode.”
The fire engulfed the shop immediately after he went out with his 77-year-old mother Bishnu Maya. They then called Gopi Poudel, a nearby grocery store owner. Even as the half-dressed Poudels came out, the fire grew in size after a gas cylinder inside the tea shop exploded. The situation got out of hand when eight cylinders inside the adjoining gas depot went off one after another. The city of Bharatpur felt the tremor of explosions and nervous locals came out of their homes fearing a massive bomb blast.
The fire engine reached the spot an hour later even as the people in the neighborhood struggled to control the fire. The whole house had burnt down by the time the fire engine arrived as the cylinders kept exploding. Om Hospital and Shanti Hospital that sandwich the house faced a hard time shifting the admitted patients at midnight.
“We shifted the patients to a house behind,” said Laxmi Subedi, an employee at the Shanti Hospital. “The two hospitals and other surrounding houses would have also been gutted had the fire engine arrived later,” Subedi added.
The locals were furious at the police and municipality office that sent just one fire engine despite having two. Executive Officer of the municipal office Dilip Chapagain, who visited the in the morning, conceded the delay in arrival of the fire engine and promised better service in future. “The loss could have been averted had the fire engine arrived within 10 minutes,” said Kalidas Nepal, a local.
The tea shop owner lost materials worth Rs 300,000 while Poudel, the grocery store owner, suffered a loss of around Rs 2.5 million. The locals provided food and clothes to the half-dressed victims shivering in the cold. They have already gathered around Rs 23,000 for the families and the local administration has also promised compensation after assessing the extent of loss.
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