Amritsar, August 30 – Major fire breaks out at National Cold Storage at Daburji village the outskirt area of Amritsar city where goods worth rupees several crores gutted to fire, but no casualty reported so far.
According to Tajinder Kaur the daughter of Paramjit Singh who is MD of the National Cold Storage Amritsar claimed that fire broke out in their cold store a day before yesterday but last night it took drastic turn when the situation slipped out of control. She claimed that perishable goods including dry fruits, different kinds of chilly having worth of several crores gutted to fire besides the entire building of the cold Store. She said that now they feared about the leakage of Ammonia gas, if it was leaked it may extend damage to the health of inhabitants of several nearby villages.
On being contacted to Deputy Commissioner Harpreet Singh Sudan, said, “I along with my entire district level officers and officers from all the departments who can extend help to douse the fire flames have been called on the spot. All the officers and experts were monitoring the situation very closely”.
“First of all with the help of experts we have succeeded in defusing the entire Ammonia Gas storage. Fire tender engines from various departments have been pressed into service including the Disaster management experts. It was very tough to control the fire flames since there were no effective safety measures fitted inside the cold storage. Moreover, there was no safe route or way to enter the affected building for the team of fire brigades as a reason the RCC roof of the building was broken to douse fire. Moreover, there was no water sprinkler system fitted anywhere in the Cold storage which was utmost mandatory where highly inflammable material was stored in such a bulk quantity”, said Sudan.
Adding further he said that now the situation was being brought under control. Since it was such a massive fire incident, the entire district administration even sought help from other agencies to curb fire flames and shortly fire flames would be doused completely.
