A man tries to douse flames at Kharavela Nagar police station on Monday morning. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, April 1: A fire broke out in the backyard of Kharavela Nagar police station early this afternoon triggering panic among cops.

Some seized and unclaimed vehicles piled up in the backyard of the police station had caught fire. However, timely action of the police and fire fighting team minimised the loss.

One fire tender took more than half an hour to douse the flames that had caught an unused car and four two-wheelers near the boundary of The Telegraph office.

The incident occurred around 11am. A group of youths of an adjoining slum first saw smoke coming out of the police station campus. When they rushed to check the cause of the smoke, they found some vehicles had caught fire. They immediately informed the police officials about the fire.

“We called the fire brigade. We also started pouring water on the flames with some buckets and using water pipes that we could arrange immediately. Later, a fire tender rushed to the spot and extinguished the fire,” said inspector in charge of Kharavela Nagar police station Manoj Samant.

Fire brigade officials said that dry leaves lying in heaps on the police station ground posed threat to these vehicles. Officials suspect someone might have thrown a burnt cigarette causing the fire.

The fire fighting team had to break the glass windows of the car to douse the fire from inside.

“The vehicles were piled up on the police campus in a precarious manner. The dry leaves underneath and the rubber tyres of these vehicles had spread the fire fast,” said fire official Subash Barik.

Some bottles of inflammable substances such as seized spirit and liquor had also been found near the spot.

Official sources said that over 300 motorcycles, 15 four-wheelers and several seized three-wheelers were lying on the police station campus. The police officials started cleaning up the area as these vehicles were subject to court verification with cases still pending against their owners. The police station staff took steps to clean up the area by removing the dry leaves after the mishap.

“Recently we had seen a fire that had affected over 4000 people in our area. Seeing this fire we immediately informed the policemen and helped them in putting out the fire. It triggered panic,” said Laxmikant Naik, a local resident.

On March 8 at least 250 houses were gutted in a fire at Mali Sahi behind the police station. More than 15 fire tenders were deployed to extinguish the fire.