CG warehouse fire guts property worth millions
KATHMANDU, OCT 15 -
A massive fire that broke out in the warehouse belonging to the Chaudhary Group at Satungal-7 in the Capital gutted property worth tens of millions of rupees. The inferno in the two storey godown began at around 5 pm.
However, no human casualties were reported.
Inspector Sudhir Raj Shahi at the Thankot station said most of the employees had left the house and goods were being loaded when the fire broke out.
According to the warehouse staff, electrification work being carried out in the house sparked the fire . Some witnesses, however, attributed the blaze to an electric short circuit.
The warehouse sprawled across 100 ropanis of land housed the assemble centre for CG brands of electronic goods and a godown for electronic and home appliances. Items including mobile phones, TV sets, DVDs, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and refrigerators of brands like LG, Toshiba, Godrej, Rico and TCL, were stored in the house.
As the Post went to press, flames engulfed the house, while fire fighters said there was no chance of the fire being doused until the entire building turned to ashes.
Around a dozen fire brigades from Kathmandu, Bhaktapur, the Nepal Police and the Armed Police Force (APF) and around 24 water tankers were deployed to extinguish the fire .More than 300 security personnel from the Nepal Army, the APF and the Nepal Police and a similar number of locals had been mobilised to fight the blaze.
General manager of the house Ramesh Shrestha said they were able to salvage around 5 percent of the goods from the warehouse. Though exact figures of the loss were yet to be confirmed by the management, Shrestha claimed property worth Rs 3 billion was gutted.
According to the website of the Chaudhary Group, the complex was established in March 2005, and that around 180 people worked in it.
Locals, however, said the flames could have been put out had they been allowed to do the needful in time.
According to Ram Kumar Karki, a nearby villager, locals had shown up in huge numbers to help bring the fire under control. “However, we were allowed inside the godown’s compound,” he said. For Khumakant Pokhrel, a local shopkeeper, the fire was not too big initially. “I never thought the flames would spread all over,” he said. He blamed the late arrival of fire engines for the massive fire . “Even a single fire engine would have been enough. But when the first fire engine came in sight, after some 45 minutes, the fire had gone too big.” A fire engine from the Tribhuvan International Airpot, considered the most effective one, arrived at the site around three hours after the fire broke out.
Although there is plenty of open space in front of the godown, the warehouse lies close to a residential area in the rear. Houses lying within a 100-metre periphery were evacuated. According to Ganesh Shrestha, a local, people living in the houses were panic stricken soon after the flames started approaching the settlement. “A few of them even lost consciousness,” he said.
While the inferno meant horror to many, some people even took their chance to steal away valuable electronic goods from the mess. While the staff and police were busy fetching out whatever they could from the godown, some locals tried their hands at robbing off as many mobile phone sets and portable goods they could. In the course, police arrested nearly 20 such individuals. “We were able to catch just a few people who were trying to rob in bulk,” said APF police constable Rajendra Bahadur Bhandari. “There may have been many others as well whom we could not locate.”
Source: The Kathmandu Post
