A fireman climbs a ladder to enter New Market through the southeastern end of the facade on Wednesday evening and (below) Mamata Banerjee at the blaze site. Pictures by Anindya Shankar Ray

New Market remains the tinderbox it was the first time a fire ravaged the city’s favourite shop stop 25 years ago.

“The entire market is very poorly maintained. The electricity lines, the building, everything is faulty. There can be a tragedy here anytime,” Aslam, a supplier to two New Market shops, told Metro as firefighters fought Wednesday evening’s blaze.

Aslam’s words echoed the feelings of shopowners and salesmen who watched anxiously as columns of smoke billowed out of the red façade.

“The electric wiring is primitive. If there is a spark in one shop, it can easily spread to the rest of the market,” said Rohit Shaw, whose shop P.L. Shaw is in the spice section behind the flower range, where the fire started in a sari shop called Kashish.

While the origin of Wednesday’s fire was the southeastern end of the market under the clock tower, the more devastating December 11 blaze in 1985 had broken out in the northwestern section. New Market may now look very different from what it was then with an underground parking lot and a pedestrian plaza above it on the Lindsay Street side, but its safety quotient apparently isn’t any better.

The wall around the Simpark Mall had prevented fire engines from entering the square until mayor Sovan Chatterjee ordered that a part of it be brought down. “Would you believe it? They (the authorities) wasted 20 minutes trying to decide what to do,” said Vicky, who owns the garment shop Hi-Choice in New Market.

The fire brigade also drew flak for allegedly coming underprepared to fight the flames. “The firemen didn’t have gas masks. They were not able to penetrate the wall of smoke and find out the source of the fire until much later,” a shop owner said.

Vicky said it was a shame that the fire brigade hadn’t learnt its lessons from the tragedy at Stephen Court, less than a kilometre away, last year.

Mahesh Punjabi, the joint secretary of the SS Hogg Market Traders’ Association, claimed the electrical wiring wasn’t as bad as some shopkeepers were trying to make it out to be.

“The wiring was redone recently and proper circuit breakers were installed. But the Calcutta Municipal Corporation can definitely be a little more supportive of us. The shop owners should also shoulder a part of the blame. They stock cartons and other inflammable material in their shops,” he said.

Punjabi said New Market might have had to relive the 1985 disaster had Wednesday’s fire started in the more congested Block B. “The civic body should talk to the shopkeepers and lay down safety guidelines for them. Another problem we face is the lack of firefighting equipment in the market. There are some fire extinguishers, but I don’t know whether they are usable. Simpark has its own water reservoir, but New Market doesn’t. Simpark wouldn’t let us use its reservoir,” he added.

Sir Stuart Hogg Market was completed and thrown open to the public on January 1, 1874. Sir Stuart was the chairman of the Justices of Peace in Calcutta from 1866 to 1876, chairman of the newly-formed Calcutta Corporation and the commissioner of police. Occupying three sides of a quadrangle, the market was constructed after razing the old, dirty Fenwick’s Bazar. It is said that the clock tower on the eastern end was shipped from Huddersfield in England to Calcutta. The main entrance has a handsome carriage porch as well.

The market was conceived after the Europeans, fed up with the filth of the native bazars, had raised the demand for a shopping destination where they would feel at home. So the Calcutta Corporation bought Lindsay Street and the Eastern India Railway Company designed this clunking piece of Victoriana, the architect commissioned being the renowned R. Bayne. The northern portion of the Gothic market came up in 1909.

New Market houses one of the city’s oldest confectionery shops, the much-loved Nahoum & Sons, owned by a Jewish family, and old sari shops like Dayaram and Lalchand Dhalamal, one of the original Sindhi families to open shop here. The Boses, Banerjees and Coondoos are some of the most trusted florists of New Market’s famous flower range. For the gourmet, there is Bandel cheese, a speciality of this market that never grows old.