Airport fire: Storage of fuel at hangar not a reason?

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Hyderabad: Agencies inquiring into the fire mishap, at the Begumpet airport, found no concrete evidence to confirm that storing of aviation fuel, in drums, caused the quick spread of fire and large scale damage, as was suspected earlier.
The State-owned Agusta Westland helicopter, used by the Chief Minister, and six trainer aircrafts, were gutted in the freak mishap on December 18.
The Government, besides entrusting the investigation to the Criminal Investigation Department, also set up a three-member high level panel to inquire into the circumstances leading to the fire accident.
Home principal secretary T.P. Das, agriculture special chief secretary I.Y.R. Krishna Rao and H.N. Mishra, assistant director (air safety), director general of civil aviation constitute the committee.
 Sources told this newspaper that the three-member panel sent a questionnaire to all the departments involved and is obtaining inputs from the investigating authorities also as to  whether or not they fulfilled their obligations of the day.
“Till now there are some speculations about storage of oil in drums. But, there is no concrete evidence to support this theory,” sources said adding that the report would be submitted to the Government around January 20.
 The investigating agencies came to a preliminary conclusion that the electric short circuit led to the fire which caused the hangar to collapse on the aircraft.
The committee wanted to ascertain from the departments, like infrastructure and investment, aviation corporation, DGCA, fire services and GHMC, their respective roles.
The committee sought to know whether the agencies fulfilled their obligation like conducting routine checks on the premises, verifying the preparedness of the staff, in the event of fire, and availability of fire control mechanism.
The sources said the aviation corporation also made it clear to the investigating agencies that it would never store fuel as filling is always done directly from the designated location in systematic manner.