140 men battle for 4 hours to tame fire

As many as 140 fire personnel and 60 fire engines battled the major fire that broke out on the top floor of six-storey National Museum of Natural History here on Tuesday.

After receiving information about the fire, eight fire engines from the Connaught Place Fire Station were rushed to the spot and a team of 12 fire officials went inside the building to assess the situation. However, the fire personnel who went inside the building were trapped inside.

“They got trapped inside the building and failed to get out as both the staircases were blocked by burning material. The fire personnel gave visual signals with their flash lights and one of them managed to make an SOS call on his wireless, following which a rescue operation was launched immediately and the personnel were rescued safely,” said an officer with the fire department.

To control the fire, a dozen more fire tenders were rushed from Safdarjung and other fire stations, deputy director of Delhi Fire Services Atul Garg said, adding that 35 fire tenders in total and two skylifts were pressed into service in the operation that lasted for over four hours.

“The temperature inside the building at 2.15 am reached 800 Celsius and could even go up to 1000 Celsius. The fire personnel are dressed in proper uniform and equipped with techniques to meet the challenges. It took around eight lakh litres water to douse the fire,” he said.

The operation hit a critical point when six firefighters — including an assistant divisional officer, a station officer and a sub-officer — got stuck on the fourth floor of the building.

“The fire, that originated from the fifth floor, had spread till the fourth floor. The fire officers wanted to do damage control on the fourth floor. What they could not assess well was the rate at which the flames were spreading,” former chief fire officer A.K. Sharma said.

When they were trying to control the situation on the fourth floor, dodging burning fibre ceilings that were falling down in pieces, the fire made its way to the third floor too. While two of them were rescued with the help of a skylift, others came down using scaffoldings installed outside the building, part of which is undergoing repair.

They were all rushed to a hospital after having inhaled excessive smoke, and were discharged by Tuesday evening. The cause of the fire is still to be ascertained and the Delhi Fire Service has started preparing a report on the incident.