Horrific picture of Delhi fire, neighbors tried to save the family by breaking walls and windows, allegation of delay in help.

Delhi. After a fire broke out in a residential building in Delhi’s Palam area, neighbors tried to save the family trapped inside by breaking the wall and window. Eyewitnesses gave this information. At the same time, some people alleged that the rescue work was delayed due to poor equipment of the firefighters. The multi-storey building located near Ram Chowk market near Palam Metro station was completely gutted in a fire that broke out on Wednesday.

In this fire, nine members of the same family living there, including three children, died and three others got burnt. Locals said that there were clothes and cosmetics shops on the ground and first floors of the building, while the family of building owner Rajendra Kashyap lived on the second and third floors. He told that after seeing the fire around 6:30 in the morning, a flower seller informed the neighbors about it.

According to the police, information about the fire was received by Palam village police station at around 7:04 am and the team immediately reached the spot. School cab driver Kamal said that around 40 people, including local people and fire brigade personnel, tried to save the people trapped inside by breaking the shutter of the shop. Due to the fire, the shutter has been completely broken and the electrical wires have been badly burnt.

Kamal alleged that the fire brigade personnel who reached the spot faced technical problems. “When firefighters reached the spot, they could not use their equipment immediately due to a malfunction in the pressurization system,” he said. If the equipment had worked on time, some lives could have been saved.”

Eyewitnesses said people made repeated attempts to reach the trapped people before additional fire engines arrived. The fire office said that a total of 30 fire engines were used for this operation. Raghunandan Sharma, owner of a nearby clothing shop, said that his son informed him about the fire. He said, “By the time I reached the spot, the fire had spread. I started shouting to the people inside to run upstairs. Someone shouted back that they were trapped inside.

Sharma said, “We went to the roof of the adjacent building and tried to go inside from there, but the smoke was so dense that we could not go inside.” He said that attempts were also made to break the front window of the burning building but the smoke was so dense that their efforts failed. Sharma said, “When firefighters reached the spot, their hydraulic machine could not function for about 45 minutes. It took about 50 minutes for the second fire engine to arrive, and due to this delay people had to try to climb up on their own.”

He said that if the hydraulic system of the fire department had worked on time, this horrific tragedy could have been prevented. Neighbors involved in the rescue operation said that the smoke was so dense that no one could see anything and it was continuously becoming denser. A neighbor said that the police also tried to break a part of the wall from the adjacent house. “We all tried together and managed to break a part of the wall, but the smoke was so dense that it was impossible to take even a step inside,” he said.

Officials said they are investigating the cause of the fire as well as allegations of delay in fire service and malfunction of fire fighting equipment. Neighbors said that the fire spread more rapidly due to the items kept in the building. A neighbor said, “The victim’s family dealt in lingerie and cosmetics, which are highly inflammable items, so the fire spread rapidly.

The house was filled with stuff and there was no ventilation system. Local residents said that a joint family lived in the building and the members included an elderly couple, their son and daughter-in-law and several grandchildren. He said that at the time of the incident, some members of the family were out of the house, one son was on a foreign trip and the other son’s family had gone to Shimla. Sharma said Kashyap’s wife was physically disabled and used a wheelchair, which would have made the rescue operation even more difficult.