A blaze ravaged a part of an office on the third floor of Himalaya House, a Chowringhee highrise barely 100m from Chatterjee International Centre where a fire had broken out in September.

Firemen who managed to enter the 4,000sq ft office of Reliance Insurance found seven charred desktops and laptops that were switched on. Several other desktops in other parts of the office were unaffected.

'The fire-fighting system in the office was lying defunct,' an officer said.

A bank and another insurance company, besides Reliance Insurance, have offices in the eight-storeyed building.

Traffic on Jawaharlal Nehru Road between the Dorina crossing and the Exide intersection was stopped from 8.30am to 10.30am.

'Some of the desktops were partially charred but their CPUs were switched on. In fact, one laptop was switched on even after we had doused the fire. It was connected to the UPS,' a fire department official said.

Electrical engineers Metro spoke to said the cause of the fire was probably the power point or the wires and not the computers that were switched on.

'It seems the fire broke out because the current that surged through the electric point and the cables was above their resistance level. There are several 24x7 offices where computers are switched on for days on end but rarely do fires break out,' said Keshav Bhattacharya, a professor in electrical engineering at Jadavpur University.

'The fire affected an area of 100sq ft. It was not a big fire but electrical fires tend to produce a lot of smoke,' said a fire officer.

The fire department has been advising the owners of residential and commercial properties to use fire-resistant cables.

No one was injured, primarily because most of the 400-odd people who work in the building had not arrived before the fire broke out.

A guard first spotted smoke streaming out of a gap between the floor and the locked door of Reliance Insurance around 8.10am, less than an hour before the entire building would have been buzzing with people.

By the time the first fire engine arrived 20 minutes later, the entire floor was filled with thick smoke.

Firefighters mounted on an electronic ladder struggled to aim their water jet into the blazing office through a narrow opening created by breaking a window.

Two firemen crawled on their knees for over half an hour in the smoke-filled room wearing breathing masks, trying to locate and break open windows to let out the smoke.

'The rest of the firefighters who went there could enter the office only after the two wearing masks smashed some windows and the accumulated smoke escaped,' said a fire department official.

The firemen granted permission for work to resume on all the floors barring the one where the fire broke out.

Himalaya House at 38B Jawaharlal Nehru Road is situated between American Center and Ispat Bhavan.

In September last year, a fire had broken out on the 15th floor of Chatterjee International Centre, barely 100m from Himalaya House. At Stephen House on Park Street, less than 500m from Himalaya House, 43 people had died in a blaze in 2010.

Thursday's fire turned the focus on a problem firemen have been frequently facing. 'The office had all fire-fighting gadgets but none was working. When we tried to connect the hosepipes to the hydrants to draw water from the building's reservoir, we discovered that the couplings were missing,' the fire department official said.

Asked about the firefighters' allegation, officials who work in the affected office refused to speak.

Safety tips

• Use fire-resistant cables for wiring
• Keep upgrading electrical wiring 
• Install circuit-breakers. In case of power surge beyond the limit, circuit-breakers trip and prevent a fire or an explosion
• Do not overload plug points by plugging in too many appliances 
• Always hire licensed electricians 

Source: West Bengal Fire and Emergency Services