40-year-old dies after fire breaks out at Taloja firm
NAVI MUMBAI: A 40-year-old employee of a healthcare products company at Taloja MIDC died on Sunday after a massive fire broke out on the ground floor of the building.
According to the police, the fire broke out around 8am at Emmessar Biotech & Nutrition Ltd (EBNL), which manufactures and markets healthcare and nutritional products. An official from the Taloja MIDC fire brigade said two employees were packing some products when the fire broke out.
“A few chemical barrels on the ground floor of the two-storey building caught fire, which spread faster after reaching some other barrels, stored on the first floor. While one of the employees escaped, the second one, Ranjit Kumar Singh, got stuck and was charred to death,” he said.
Two fire tenders reached the spot and it took three hours to douse the fire. Employees from nearby companies also threw water from their upper floors to douse the fire. “The fire was doused at 11am and cooling operations were started after that. The value of the property damaged is yet to be assessed,” the official said. The exact reason behind the fire has not been understood so far. An officer of the Taloja MIDC police station said a few explosions were reportedly caused by some chemical reactions and the fire broke out just after that. “We will investigate the matter.”
The police have registered an accidental death case. Singh’s body was sent to Panvel rural hospital for the post-mortem and was then handed over to his family.