Fire at pooja store in Begum Bazar

Fire broke out in a decade-old pooja material shop and godown at Begum Bazar Chatri on Sunday afternoon reducing property worth several lakhs of rupees to ashes.

As incense sticks and camphor were stocked up in large quantities, the fire spread fast and made it difficult for the fire-fighters to extinguish the flames.

Lack of proper access to the building further complicated the matters stretching the exercise beyond four hours.

The Lakshminarayana pooja material shop on the ground floor of the single-storied building opened around 3 pm and the mishap occurred at 4.20 p.m. The fire spread to the first floor where stocks of pooja material were kept.

“It seems the shop has an internal staircase to the godown, through which the fire spread rapidly to the first floor,” Hyderabad District Fire Officer Deendayal told Expresso. Blocked by iron grills, the water being pumped by the fire tenders was not going into the burning first floor portion.

Responding to the situation, some locals climbed atop the tin-roofs of the shops and removed the grills with great effort.

Still, eight fire tenders had to pump in water for more than four hours to put out the flames.

Though there were six other shops, including a fire cracker store, on the ground floor of the building the fire luckily did not spread to them. Police and locals shifted the fire crackers out of the shop and away to a safe place.

Fire fighters sprayed water on the adjacent buildings also as a precautionary measure.

According to locals, the shop has been running from the building for decades.

Deendayal said they are yet to ascertain the cause of the fire.

“We can come to a conclusion tomorrow only after we conduct an investigation,” he said.