By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: Five persons sustained burn injuries while twenty-two houses and a godown were gutted in two separate fire incidents that broke out near Reid Chest Hospital, Mawbah and Jhaluapara on Wednesday.
In the first incident, which occurred at around 9:15 am, twenty-two houses were gutted when a fire, which police investigation say, broke out due to a stove blast, emerged suddenly and spread to nearby houses in no time. According to eye witnesses, the fire spread rapidly to nearby residences as all the houses in the vicinity were wooden structures and built close to one another.
Fire tenders faced lots of difficulties in entering into the narrow lanes, thereby slowing down the rescue operation.
Police also informed that no one was injured in the fire. The total loss is, however, estimated to run into several lakh rupees.
Local NGOs, clubs and residents joined hands to provide basic amenities like food and shelter to several families, who had lost everything in the raging fire and had been rendered homeless.
In the second incident of fire that occurred in Jhalupara area of the city on Wednesday afternoon, five people sustained burn injuries when a distributor shop selling deodorants, owned by Sumermal Bijay Singh and Amit Surana, was engulfed in a fire at around 3.50 pm on Wednesday.
According to the Additional Superintendent of Police (Crime), Vivek Syiem, the employees of the shop, were checking for defective items in the godown.
They were piercing the defective spray bottles with a pin and the leaked spray which was let out onto the road caught fire immediately from a lighted cigarette butt thrown on road. The fire led straight to the godown.
The injured persons were identified as Chinmoy Mandal, Dipankar Shyam Gupta, Nurol Ali, Anil Thapa and Dira Mukhia. Mandal and Gupta sustained severe burns. The injured persons were rushed to the hospital.