HYDERABAD: A day after four Volvo luxury buses and two trucks were gutted in a fire accident at Bahadurpura in the old city of Hyderabad, it is suspected that open dumping of garbage led to the mishap that has cost the vehicle owners crores of rupees. In fact, garbage, that is dumped in open areas, is emerging as one of the major causes of fire accidents in recent times.
“The fire accident is suspected to be due to the piles of garbage stored at the rear end of the buses. No one noticed how the fire started and as the buses had engines in the rear, it didn’t take much time to catch fire,” explained a fire services official who took part in the fire-fighting operations.
During the period January to April this year, 1,269 fire accidents took place in open areas, where waste material was dumped, in the state. Warehouses, stock yards, sheds, storage sheds are the other common places where fire accidents break out and 104 accidents were recorded at these premises until April.
A major reason, according to fire officials, is careless smoking. Between January and April careless smoking constituted the major cause of fire on 2,079 occasions. Among the mishaps caused by other causes, 1,175 were due to electric short-circuit and 74 due to sparks from heat.
“For the longest time, careless smoking has been a major cause of fire accidents. We are holding several awareness campaigns and yet the major cause of fire continues to be careless smoking,” said V Papaiah, regional fire officer, Telangana State Disaster Response and Fire Services Department (TSDRFS).
110 computers gutted in software training inst
In a major fire accident that occurred in the early hours of Sunday, 110 computers and furniture were gutted at a software training institute in Ameerpet. The fire occurred at Engineers CADD centre, located opposite RS Brothers, due to suspected electric short-circuit. The fire broke out at about 5:30 am, said Md Musthafa, SFO of Sanathnagar. Another fire-tender from the Secretariat had to be requisitioned to douse the flames. Institute owner Anand Reddy said the fire caused him a loss of
`50,000.