Lucknow: Three men, a woman and a child were charred to death and over 50 suffered burns when two adjacent five-storey hotels near Lucknow's Charbagh railway station caught fire at 5.30am on Tuesday.
A two-hour delay in the arrival of fire tenders has caused a controversy, with a minister somewhat implausibly blaming an early-morning traffic rush and the police and hotel staff contesting each other's claims about the time when help was sought.
Both SSJ International and Viraat International, which cater to middle-income patrons, had all their 50-60 rooms fully occupied, mostly with aspiring police constables who had written their recruitment test on Monday.
Fire broke out in SSJ International's basement, which houses a bar, and spread to Viraat, quickly engulfing all the floors of either hotel, with many of the guests still asleep, staff said.
As the local people raised the alarm, most of the guests were able to scramble out to safety but still many were trapped.
Three people died in SSJ and two in Viraat. Himmat Singh, director of the Civil Hospital, said an injured woman had 90 per cent burns.
Although Charbagh is at the city centre, the fire brigade and the police arrived only around 7.30am. It took eight fire tenders four hours to control the flames.
State tourism minister Rita Bahuguna Joshi blamed the delay on "traffic congestion". There is usually little congestion before 8.30am.
"Initial reports suggest that a short-circuit started the fire," Joshi told reporters. "Our priority is to ensure the injured get proper treatment. We need to develop a system so that fire tenders reach blaze sites quickly."
Senior superintendent of police Deepak Kumar said the hotel staff had called the police "one hour after the fire broke out".
An SSJ employee told this newspaper the police and the fire brigade had been informed within minutes of the blaze breaking out.
"Several huge bags of wax were stored in the basement. We don't know why the owner had brought the wax, but the fire engulfed the entire building within no time," the employee said.
"The area has a large number of hotels in close proximity, most of them encroaching on the pavements and lacking adequate fire-fighting systems." He added: "We had realised immediately that it was going to be a big fire because of the wax and alcohol (stocked in the bar) in the basement. So we called the police and the fire brigade immediately."