Three members of a building owner’s family were rescued after a fire broke out at a godown storing cloth and foam in northeast Delhi’s Mandoli area on Sunday, with fire officials assessing a short circuit as the probable cause during a preliminary inquiry.
The incident was reported from a two-storey building in D Block, Harsh Vihar, where police said two fire incidents were reported at the godown. Four fire tenders, two ambulances and four Delhi Disaster Management Authority personnel were sent to the site.
The fire was subsequently doused, and a thorough search of the building was carried out. Police said no one was found injured or trapped inside after the search. A senior police officer said the ground floor was locked when the incident occurred, while the three family members were safely evacuated from the building.
The ground floor had been rented to Himanshu, a resident of Sunder Nagri, who was using the premises to store cloth and foam used in the manufacture of weightlifting belts, police said. The material being stored made the incident a fire-safety concern within a building that also housed the owner’s family.
The preliminary assessment by a fire brigade officer identified a short circuit as the probable cause. Police have not reported any injuries, but the incident involved a storage operation in a two-storey structure and required a coordinated response involving the fire service, ambulances and disaster-management personnel.
The case also highlights the operational difficulty of responding to fires in buildings where residential occupancy and storage activity exist in the same premises. In this instance, the locked ground floor was being used for commercial storage, while members of the owner’s family were present in the building.
Further inquiry into the incident is underway, according to police. Authorities have not announced any additional findings on the building’s fire-safety arrangements or the storage facility’s compliance status.
