Massive fire in Pitampura building kills four of a family; three injured

NEWDELHI: Four people, including two children aged 4 and 10, were killed after a fire broke out in a four-storey residential building in northwest Delhi’s Kohat Enclave near Pitampura in the early hours of Friday.

The deceased were identified as Rakesh Nagpal, 35, his wife Tina Nagpal, 30, their son Divyansh, 10, and their four-year-old daughter Shreya. Rakesh ran a garments shop i n Chandni Chowk. The family originally belonged to Sirsa in Haryana.

A neighbour Shilpa Malik said they tried to repeatedly warn the Nagpals about the fire. The building’s security guard and neighbours even rang the door bell and screamed to alert the family, but received no response.

“While everybody came out on their own or were rescued, the Nagpals were trapped. Their bodies were found on the stairs. It seems they had attempted to come out through the parking space but suffocated to death,” she said.

Police said that the family had been living in the first-floor rented flat for the past three years. The four apparently died due to suffocation and their charred bodies were recovered from the stairs of the building. The building did not have any fire fighting arrangement.

Three members of another family, including a 90-year-old man, were injured during the rescue operation. Five cars, five scooters and two motorcycles, which were parked in the stilt parking of the building, were completely destroyed in the blaze. Two more cars parked outside the building were also damaged in the fire. Officials said ten fire tenders took around two hours to douse the flames completely.

The occupants of the building alleged that the fire tenders reached late and by the time fire fighting and rescue operations began, the blaze had already engulfed parked vehicles and the front portion of the building, blocking the lone exit route.

“We made several calls to the fire control room but the person attending the calls did not take the fire seriously. The first fire tender reached the spot in ten minutes but its water pressure was low. Despite repeated calls, the other fire tenders reached the spot only after 50 minutes. By then everything was over,” said the member of a family living on the third floor.

Chief fire officer Atul Garg, however, refuted the allegations, and said there was no problem with the water pressure of the fire tenders. He said initially only two fire tenders were dispatched to the spot because the fire was only spotted in the electric meter board.

“The fire was only in the stilt parking so the fire fighters were spraying water only in the affected areas. Locals wanted the fire fighters to spray water in the upper floors from where only smoke was coming out,” said Garg.

Twenty-three people from four families lived on the four floors while a security guard lived in the stilt parking. Seventeen people managed to come out before the fire and smoke, which apparently started in the electrical meter board, engulfed the stilt parking area.

Three other injured victims, including the 90-year-old, were trapped on the second floor and were rescued by the firemen.

“The burning tyres, fuel, seats and other plastic items of the vehicles caused heavy smoke. The flames was limited only to the parking space and the first floor balcony. But the smoke spread through the entire building turning it into a virtual gas chamber,” said Aslam Khan, deputy commissioner of police (northwest).

DCP Khan said a case of causing death by negligence has been registered against the builder, who owns three floors of the building.