20230831 Family of 4 from Rajasthan dead in fire at Chikhali hardware shop
India Aug 31 2023 “Building”
Dead : dead 1 to 4 Burnout : 1 to 29 Injured : injured 0 or unknown
Family of 4 from Rajasthan dead in fire at Chikhali hardware shop
Updated: 2023-08-31
PUNE: Four members of a family, including a woman and two minors, were killed in a fire in a hardware and electrical items store on the ground floor of a commercial-cum-residential complex at Purnanagar in Chikhali, about 22km from the city, around 5.15am on Wednesday.
Police identified the victims as Chimnaram Benaram Chaudhari (48), his wife Namrata (40), and their sons Bhavesh (15) and Sachin (14), all hailing from Pali district in Rajasthan. The fire broke out at the Sachin Hardware and Electricals shop on the ground floor of “Pooja Heights” just a day after the family had returned from a four-day tour of Jammu & Kashmir.
Eight fire tenders were deployed to put off the blaze. The flames were doused within an hour. Charred bodies of the victims were later sent to the Yashwantrao Chavan Memorial Hospital.
“Prima facie, short circuit appeared to be the cause of the fire. An investigation is on,” Pimpri Chinchwad’s additional commissioner of police, Vasant Pardeshi, told TOI. The MSEDCL later said in a release that there was no short circuit from its supply lines.
Fire eyewitness heard deceased boy say ‘can’t see anything due to thick smoke’
Assistant commissioner of police Padmkar Ghanwat said the police had registered a case of accidental death.
Pimpri Chinchwad municipal commissioner Shekhar Singh said a joint panel of civic officials, the Pimpri Chinchwad police and the state electricity department would investigate the cause of the fire.
Pardeshi said, “The family had moved to Pune 12 years ago. They stayed on the mezzanine floor inside the shop they had rented for running their store. The victims were sleeping when the fire broke out. The shutters of the establishment were locked from inside and the victims might have not been able to find the keys of the locks because of thick black smoke inside. Besides, the shutters became too hot to handle due to the heat.”
Pimpri Chinchwad fire brigade’s fire officer Uday Wankhede said, “Highly inflammable material, including paints, thinner, turpentine and other chemicals, was stored inside the shop. They caused minor explosions and the fire spread within a few minutes. Some plastic material inside added fuel to the fire.”
Narendra Sapke, a resident of the building, told TOI, “My wife woke up and opened the balcony door around 5.15am. She spotted smoke emanating from the ground floor. She woke me and other family members, thinking fire had broken out in a bank on the ground floor. I rushed to the ground floor and found smoke billowing out of the hardware shop. I alerted other residents, who moved out of the building. I suffered minor burns in my attempt to open the shutter locked from inside.”
Sapke’s son, Sachin, said, “We could hear a woman’s screams for help. The shop has one more access, which opens to the parking lot of the building. The Chaudhari family members used it to enter the store. When we reached that entrance, we heard one of their sons crying for help. We tried to talk to him and told him to open the shutter. We heard him saying, ‘Due to the thick smoke, I can’t see anything.’ These were his last words.”
Another resident, Dilip Patil, said, “We could hear minor explosions while thick black smoke started emanating through the gaps of the shutters. The flats above the shop blackened due to the smoke.”
Fire officer Wankhede said, “Even after pouring water to cool down the shutters, we found it difficult to open. We then tied a hook to one of the shutters and the other end to our vehicle and drove it to rip apart the shutters. Our team found the shop filled with thick black smoke. We found three charred bodies on the ground floor and a boy’s body on the mezzanine floor.”
Another fire officer said the Chaudhari family had converted their mezzanine floor of the shop into their house. “They had fixed iron bars and put wooden flooring on that floor. There was a kitchen and two rooms. We shifted two LPG cylinders out from that floor. The wooden floor was destroyed. The iron bars had bent in the heat,” he said.
Punaram Gehlot, an acquaintance of the Chaudhari family, told TOI, deceased Chimnaram Chaudhari’ elder son Bhavesh was a Standard X student and younger son Sachin studied in Standard VII. His sisters stay in Kondhwa and other relatives are in Rajasthan.”
The Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) release issued later in the day stated that the power supply to the building was shut immediately after the fire broke out. MSEDCL’s engineers and employees found that the shop’s electricity meter and the service wire were in a good condition. A team of the state government’s electricity department visited the spot, it added.
Web Source: The Times of India