The fire rages in the dumping yard of the carriage repair workshop of East Coast Railway at Mancheswar in Bhubaneswar. Pictures by Ashwinee Patil

Bhubaneswar, April 5: A major fire that broke out at the dumping yard of carriage repair workshop of East Coast Railway in Mancheswar last night exposed the lack of fire prevention measures by the railway authorities.

Fire personnel were informed about the fire around 8.45pm yesterday. Nearly 24 hours later, the fire continues to rage.

“The workshop stores highly combustible materials such as lubricants, rubber and paints, but is not equipped with enough foam, which helps control fire incidents,” said fire officer of Bhubaneswar Ramesh Majhi.

It has just one fire tender, which cannot tackle such mishaps. The workshop lacks trained personnel to deal with fires, and equipment meant to support it are insufficient.

“The railway authorities just have a few fire extinguishers. They are not equipped to deal with such mishaps,” he said.

An overhead water tank on the grounds of the workshop fails to generate enough pressure to douse fires, and an underground tank is too small.

As a result, fire tenders that were pressed into service to douse the flames had to bring in water.

The water hydrant systems installed at the workshop also failed to generate pressure because no pumping facilities were available.

The fire was still raging at the time this report was filed even though 10 fire tenders and 60 fire personnel from Cuttack, Khurda, Jatni, Chandrasekharpur, Secretariat and Kalpana fire stations were pressed into service.

The fire has been partially doused. Fire officials said more than 100 water tanks had been used to try and control the blaze so far.

The dumping yard is located on around eight acres, while the fire has engulfed 1.5 acres.

“We found that the bushes within a 10-meter radius of the sub-station were not cleared properly, which led to the fire spreading quickly. The authorities need to have a proper segregation mechanism of scrap material. That would have helped control the fire,” said Majhi.

Though the exact cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained, officials attribute it to a short circuit at the electric sub-station on the workshop premises.

However, chief public relations officer of East Coast Railway R.N. Mohapatra said the situation was under control.

“We have adequate fire safety arrangements. We were able to control the fire to ensure that the workshop was not affected. Only scrap material that were of no value were destroyed,” said Mohapatra.