Team rescued after hotel building catches fire

Indian cricket team captain MS Dhoni and wicket keeper batsman Dinesh Karthik were among 647 persons rescued from a hotel in Dwarka on Friday morning after a blaze was reported in a mall in the same complex.

A total of 24 cricketers from Jharkhand and Bengal, who are in Delhi to participate in the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy, were staying at the hotel when the fire broke out around 6.30am. Sources said Dhoni was staying on the ninth floor.

Officials later said that none of the cricketers or other guests sustained any injuries in the blaze, even as dense smoke engulfed several upper floors of the hotel, forcing an evacuation. The hotel, from which the blaze was reported, is located in Dwarka Sector-10, right opposite the southwest DCP’S office.

According to the police, the blaze was first spotted in a shop located on the first floor of the Pinnacle Mall. The mall is located on the first two floors of the same multi-storey building in which the hotel is situated. “There was no one in the mall at that hour. The fire was brought to my notice by a man who sleeps in the store. I immediately informed my superiors who went on to call the fire department,” said Abhishek, a guard at the mall.

The fire department immediately dispatched 30 fire tenders to control the situation. “The fire was contained to two floors of the mall, but dense smoke reached as far up as the eighth floor,” said Atul Garg, chief fire officer, Delh Fire Services.

Rishiraj Singh, the genera manager of the hotel, said his staf showed promptness in evacuat ing the building immediately.

Outside the hotel, the guests found easy access to Dhoni and other cricketers and used the opportunity to take selfies with them even as fire fighters tried to contain the blaze over the nex couple of hours. The guests were allowed to reenter the hotel three hours later.