Firemen try to douse the flames at a transport godown at Jharpada in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, May 16: A sudden fire in a storeroom of a transport company near Jharpada jail in Laxmi Sagar area this afternoon gutted property worth more than one lakh rupees.

According to the fire brigade officials, they got to know around 3.15 pm that a storeroom near Jharpada jail had caught fire. The fire brigade from nearby Kalpana Square rushed to the spot immediately. “We saw an asbestos house on fire. Soon, we started to dowse the fire,” said B.B. Das, officer-in-charge of the fire team.

The fire brigade team found most of the materials kept inside the room had caught fire. Three fire brigade vehicles were deployed to extinguish the fire.

The staff of the storeroom said that they had gone out for lunch when the incident occurred. On returning, they found smoke rising from the asbestos roof of the storeroom. After several attempts, however, they failed to dowse the fire.

“We went for lunch around 2pm. When we returned, we found the house was burning. We soon called the fire brigade,” said Binod Kumar Rungta, owner of transport company Deluxe Roadways Limited. Rungta said his company transports goods. Today, the company’s storeroom was filled with synthetic materials, foams, some medicines and some metallic instruments. Though the storeroom’s staff could not say how the house caught fire, fire officials said that it was triggered by a short circuit.

The fire officials said that according to preliminary estimates, the loss of property was to the tune of more than rupees one lakh. “It could be even more than that. But a final assessment will take time,” said Das.

There were two more storerooms of other transport companies in close proximity on the same campus, which luckily escaped the fire. Though the storerooms were used for storing deferent kinds of material, which also included inflammable substances, the company authorities had kept no fire fighting arrangements. “As there was no need of any fire extinguisher, we had not kept any such thing here,” said Rungta.

Local traders, however, said things could be controlled quickly only as the fire broke out in the daytime. “Had it occurred in the night, all the storerooms on the campus, along with other business establishments adjacent to this storeroom, would have been gutted down,” said Santosh Pradhan, a local trader.