Firemen try to put out the fire at a Maheshtala warehouse on Sunday; (above) fire trucks at the spot. (Bishwarup Dutta)

Thousands of kilos of medicines and tea were burnt when a two-storey warehouse in Maheshtala caught fire around noon on Sunday, the crackling flames preventing firemen from breaking into the building till late in night.

The fire brigade had pressed 17 trucks but the blaze was yet to be contained till late on Sunday.

No injuries were reported “because the godown was closed on Sunday”, a fire department official said.

He said firefighters rushed to warehouse at Mollar Gate in Maheshtala, around 7km west of the Taratala crossing, on being informed about smoke billowing out of the building.

The property belongs to the Indian Tea Storage Agency, which stores casks of tea on the first floor of the 26,500sqft warehouse. Alkem Laboratories Limited, a pharmaceutical company, keeps cartons of medicines on the ground floor where the fire was first detected.

The area is lined with several warehouses and shops and only a few residential houses.

Residents complained of burning eyes because of the thick smoke from chemicals burning in the warehouse. “My nose and eyes are burning because of the smoke. Thankfully, my three-year-old son Arinjay is visiting a relative. We will not bring him back till the fire is put out,” said Prasenjit Kar, a resident of the area who provides trucks to Alkem for ferrying medicines. “It’s a blow to many of us just before the Pujas,” he added.

Even firefighters were struggling to keep their eyes open. “The smoke was so thick that our men couldn’t enter the building, even with breathing apparatuses. The place was stacked with inflammable materials, which burn fast and leave a cloud of smoke hanging over the area,” the fire official said.

“The entire godown was on fire by the time we started spraying water. So it was decided to let the fire burn itself out,” he added.

The cause of the fire was yet to be determined because firemen have not managed to enter the warehouse till late in night. They said medicines and tea worth crores might have been damaged.

“People noticed smoke coming out from the ground floor of the warehouse around noon. The fire brigade was informed and they arrived within 15 minutes. But the fire had spread by then… leaping flames engulfed the entire warehouse,” said Partha Bhattacharjee, who works in a nearby tea godown in the area.

The firemen couldn’t make much headway for close to six hours. They tried to hose down the fire through holes in the wall and prevent it from spreading to the adjacent establishments.

Like most warehouses in the area, this one too lacked smoke sensors and water sprinklers. “There were only a few fire extinguishers but nobody was inside to operate them since it was a Sunday. A pond near the warehouse came handy because we could draw water from there to douse the flames,” the fireman said.