Old Kolkata market gutted

Mar 23, 2012 - Parwez Hafeez |

Age Correspondent

Kolkata

Hundreds of shops and stalls were gutted when a massive fire devastated one of Kolkata’s oldest markets. The fire broke out in north Kolkata’s Hatibagan Market at around 2.45 am, sparking horrors of the pre-dawn fire at the AMRI Hospital in December 2011. Mercifully, unlike the hospital blaze which had resulted in the deaths of 93 people by asphyxia, no one was killed or injured on Thursday.

Suspecting foul play, CM Mamata Banerjee has ordered a probe. This was the third major fire in the past 24 hours.
On Wednesday, patients had to be evacuated from the government-run super speciality S.S.K.M. Hospital in Kolkata and a private nursing home in Midnapore following major fires.
According to eye witnesses, the fire first broke out in the fruit row of the market. “Within no time, the blaze spread to the area which had shops selling dairy products. We also heard loud blasts suggesting that some gas cylinders had exploded which further fuelled the fire and it spread from the eastern part to the western part,” Rajib Ghosh who lived nearby recounted. The location of the market in a narrow and congested area slightly hampered the fire-fighting operation.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/136322" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-80b3cf2d96cb0af9112c41b900a28793" value="form-80b3cf2d96cb0af9112c41b900a28793" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="90415609" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>