20220905 Lucknow: 4 dead, 11 injured as fire breaks out in Hazratganj’s Levana hotel
India Sep 05 2022 “Apartment houses” “Building”
Dead : dead 1 to 4 Burnout : 1 to 29 Injured : injured more than 10
Lucknow: 4 dead, 11 injured as fire breaks out in Hazratganj’s Levana hotel
Updated: 2022-09-05
LUCKNOW: Four persons were killed and 11 others were hospitalised in a major fire which broke out at Hotel Levana Suites in the upscale Madan Mohan Malviya Marg area of Lucknow on Monday morning. It took 25 fire tenders over five hours to completely douse the fire. Around 35 hotel guests were rescued apart from the hotel staff. At the time of the incident, 18 out of 40 rooms of the four-storey hotel were occupied.
Apart from firemen and the police, teams from the national disaster response force (NDRF) and state disaster management force (SDRF) were also rushed to the spot to assist in rescue operations.
Chief minister Yogi Adityanath kept a close watch on the rescue operations shortly after the incident was reported, directed senior officials to reach the spot and personally supervise rescue operations. The CM later visited SPM Civil Hospital to meet those admitted. The injured will be given proper and free treatment, he said. Deputy CM Brijesh Pathak also assisted in supervising rescue operations. Defence minister and Lucknow MP Rajnath Singh took to Twitter and prayed for the speedy recovery of those injured.
A total of 15 victims were rushed to the Civil Hospital in Hazratganj where four were declared dead upon arrival. They were identified as Gurnur Anand (28), Sahiba Kaur (26), Amaan Ghazi (22) and Savika Singh (18) – all residents of Lucknow.
The fire – probably caused by a short circuit on the second floor – started at dawn and was spotted by a resident from nearby Gulmohar apartment who alerted the staff of the hotel and the fire department at 6.55 am, said the police.
As the blaze intensified, the guests in the hotel came out rushing and residents of the heavily populated area also rushed out to ensure their safety.
Firefighters had a tough time dousing the fire owing to the missing fire exit and extreme smoke in the hotel lobby. They used external ladders to access the windows of rooms on 2nd and 3rd floors where people were trapped.
The fire was so intense that firefighters had to drill holes and openings into the walls using JCBs to throw in water inside the first floor. “We also found that the firefighting devices at the hotel were not functional,” said Lucknow chief fire officer Vijay Kumar Singh.
Lucknow joint commissioner of police, Law and Order, Piyush Mordia said owners of the hotel, Pawan Agarwal, Rahul Agarwal and Rohit Agarwal, along with hotel general manager Sagar Srivastava were being questioned. The four were later booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and attempt to commit culpable homicide.
Lucknow divisional commissioner Roshan Jacob stated that Hotel Levana Suites was built without any approved map from the Lucknow development authority (LDA) and will be demolished. She said action will be taken against LDA engineers who allowed the hotel to operate without an approved map while a probe is being conducted to find out how an NOC was given to the hotel by the fire department.
Later, a forensic unit of the district police and ADG Fire also visited the hotel and got it sealed along with the LDA officials.
“I came to know about the tragic incident of fire in a hotel in Lucknow. I have inquired about the situation from the local administration. Relief and rescue operations are on. My office is in constant touch with the local administration. I pray to God for the speedy recovery of those injured in the incident,” he tweeted.
Web Source: The Times of India