Lift tragedy in city blaze - Nine dead in Strand Road railway office fire

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee arrived at the spot at night and announced Rs 10 lakh and a job for each bereaved family

Flames leaping out of the Koilaghat Building in Strand Road.: Telegraph picture

Special Correspondent   |   TT   |   Calcutta   |  09.03.21: At least nine people died in a fire that broke out on Monday evening on the 13th floor of the New Koilaghat Building that houses offices of the Indian Railway in Strand Road.

Seven people who took an elevator to try and reach the burning floor were feared dead.

Four of them are firemen, two are railway personnel and the seventh is an assistant sub-inspector attached to Hare Street police station. They were officially declared “missing”.

Nine bodies had been found till midnight and none identified. It remained unclear whether anyone working in the building had been trapped and died in the blaze, which was reported at 6.10pm.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee arrived at the spot at night and announced Rs 10 lakh and a job for each bereaved family.

The fire had broken out at the signal and telecom department office on the 13th floor of the building — the Eastern Railway office — and spread to the 12th. As many as 20 fire tenders were deployed. Pockets of fire  flared in the building around 1am.

Well past midnight, the railways had issued no formal communication on the casualties or damage to property.

“The seven missing people have been identified as Girish Dey, Gaurav Bej, Aniruddha Jana, Biman Purkait, Amit Bhawal, deputy CCM Mr Mandal and a constable of the RPF (Railway Protection Force) who was with Mandal,” state home secretary H.K. Dwivedi, who was at the site, said.

Mamata said: “The incident happened because they had tried to use the lift. We should all be careful not to use lifts during fires. The people who were going were capable. Maybe they wanted to reach quickly. They were charred.”

At one point, the chief minister questioned the railways’ sense of responsibility, asking why not a single railway official was at the site.

Mamata speaks to a person who was waiting outside the fire-hit Strand Road building

Telegraph picture

Mamata said: “This is a railway building. They have some responsibility. I don't want to politicise an accident, but it is unfortunate that no one from the railway department has come.”

“I have also been told by my minister that the fire officials had asked for a map of the building for easier access but received no cooperation.”

She later said a single railway official had turned up.

As the night wore on, teary-eyed relatives of some of the missing began arriving.

State fire minister Sujit Bose, Calcutta police commissioner Soumen Mitra, director-general of fire and emergency services Jawed Shamim, Calcutta mayor Firhad Hakim and other senior state government officials were at the spot.

Bose said it seemed that the seven had taken the lift to try and reach the 13th floor quickly. He said a detailed inquiry would be ordered into the blaze, and it would be investigated why the fire-fighting team had used the lift despite the building being on fire.

“It’s part of basic protocol that lifts are not to be used during a fire,” Bose said.

He said it would also be probed whether the building had proper fire-fighting equipment.

In Strand Road on Monday, Mamata was at the spot past midnight and then went to SSKM Hospital where the bodies had been sent to. The chief minister was seen consoling anxious people who had gathered outside the building, looking for missing relatives.