CHARRED HOMES: Amid smouldering embers and smoking debris, a woman tries to salvage belongings from the spot where her shanty off the Bypass stood on Sunday. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

A blaze off the Bypass in Tiljala ravaged 750 shanties, rendered 2,000 people homeless and paralysed Sunday evening traffic for hours.

No casualties were reported in the fire that broke out around 6.40pm and raged till 10pm. There was confusion about some children of the area not being traced till late on Sunday. “My five-year-old son was playing right there in front of our house. Four hours have passed but he is nowhere to be found,” cried Husna Mondol.

Twenty-five fire tenders were used to douse the flames in Uttar Panchannagram slum, diagonally behind the Sanjha Chulha dhaba off the Ruby-bound Bypass flank.

“The shanties were full of inflammable household items, from LPG cylinders to clothing, which caused the fire to spread rapidly,” said a firefighter. “There were some explosions, but the cause of the blaze is not yet clear.”

What was clear was the impact the blaze had on traffic on and off the Bypass. Traffic was reduced to a crawl from Salt Lake stadium to the Ruby Hospital roundabout. The south-bound flank between Science City and Ruby was shut for hours.

“Boi Mela, on the Salt Lake stadium grounds, was hit hard. As was a wedding at the PC Chandra Gardens,” said a traffic sergeant, admitting that the chaos for a while was “impossible to manage”.

That was evident from the hundreds who remained stranded outside Salt Lake stadium long after the Boi Mela gates shut at 9pm.

“We have been waiting here for an hour. We don’t know how and when we will get back home from Boi Mela,” said Priyanka and Rohini, two teary-eyed teenagers headed back to New Alipore.

The traffic snarls also slowed the fire-fighters down. “Negotiating heavy traffic flow along the Bypass was very difficult and it delayed the fire-fighting process,” said a fire brigade officer.

The fire-fighters’ problems were further compounded as the tenders ran out of water and had to rush to fire stations in Patuli and Gariahat to fill their tankers and make their way back through the car crawl.

At the blaze site, the wails of the homeless mingled with the stench of the devastation. “I have lost everything. My house and my stall behind the BR Ambedkar market,” cried Bimal Mistri, 38, a fishmonger. “I don’t how I will support my two children.”

Subrata Roy, 30, and Shanku Byapari, 32, both contractors’ labourers, were rummaging through the smouldering remains of their homes, hoping to salvage something.

Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya visited the site and blamed the blaze on the “unauthorised storage of LPG cylinders in the shanties”.

Leader of the opposition Partha Chatterjee and local MLA Javed Khan were quick to reach the spot, close to the Trinamul Bhavan. “Mere financial compensation will not do. The government will have to work out a proper rehabilitation package for the victims,” said Chatterjee. Khan said the homeless would be put up in the local schools and clubs.

There was another fire on Sunday night, this time on Grand Foreshore Road, in Howrah’s Ramkrishnapur area. A cloth godown with chemicals went up in flames around 8.30pm. Five fire tenders battled the blaze.