Mumbai inferno kills four

Mumbai: Four people died and 27 others were injured in a major fire that gutted the 12th floor of a residential building in central Mumbai’s Parel on Wednesday, exposing flagrant violations of safety codes and bringing back memories of a blaze that killed 14 people in the area last December.

Fire brigade officials said the fire started in the electric duct on the 12th floor of Crystal Tower, and the area around the lift was the worst affected.

Two people were found charred inside the elevator. The two other bodies were found in the corridors.

The 16-storey building neither had an occupation certificate, nor were mandatory fire safety regulations followed, officials added. Several illegal alterations were made to the structure, and the builder used the refuge area, meant to save residents in the event of a fire, to build more flats.

The fire brigade rescued at least 35 people.

“Crystal Tower’s firefighting system was not operational,” said P Rahangdale, the chief fire officer.

“Despite being a high-rise, it did not have a refuge area, fire alarms or a riser system.

There was an open electric duct in the centre of the building, which should have been sealed. This acted as a literal chimney and carried the dense smoke to the upper floors. All corridors were smoke logged,” Rahangdale said.

The Mumbai civic body, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, disconnected electricity and water to the building until it complied with fire safety rules. The fire brigade declared the building unsafe and sealed it.

This is the fourth blaze in Mumbai since June. On June 1, a fire broke out at Scindia House in south Mumbai.

On June 9, a part of Patel Chambers in south Mumbai’s Fort Area collapsed after a fire. And on June 13, a fire engulfed the top three floors of the 32-storey Beaumonde Towers in Prabhadevi in Dadar, a short distance away from Crystal Tower.

No casualties were reported from any of these incidents. But the worst fire in recent times broke out in a restaurant in the Kamala Mills area of Lower Parel shortly after midnight on December 29 last year. The fire swiftly spread to other buildings, killing 14 people.

PRATIK CHORGE/HT Four people died and 16 others were hospitalised after inhaling smoke when a fire broke out at a residential building, Crystal Tower, at Parel in Mumbai on Wednesday in an incident reminiscent of a restaurant fire that claimed 14 lives in the Kamala Mills area last December. Civic body BMC said the building did not have an occupation certificate, and that a legal challenge to an eviction notice it issued to 58 flat owners in 2016 is still pending in court.