A fire broke out again at a momo warehouse in Narendrapur, South 24 Parganas, on Friday night, just eight months after a blaze at the same premises killed 11 workers. Four fire engines and police personnel reached the site, while officials began investigating the cause of the latest incident.
No casualties or injuries had been reported in the latest fire at the time of the report. The fire was described as under control, although the circumstances that led to the blaze had not been established.
Fire officials have started an inquiry to determine how the fire began. The warehouse was identified in the report as the same premises where a fire broke out on January 26 in a facility used for momo-related and event-management activities. That earlier incident resulted in the deaths of 11 workers.
The repeat fire has renewed questions about whether safety measures were strengthened after the January tragedy. It has also raised concerns about the storage and use of combustible material at the premises. The report described the warehouse as abandoned and said that oil-like materials had been stored there, but the fire department had not confirmed this as the cause of the incident.
Debashis Dhar, the Trinamool Congress legislator from the Sonarpur Uttar Assembly constituency, visited the site. He said no one had been injured in Friday’s fire and that the situation was under control. Dhar also alleged that the fire may have been deliberately started and claimed there could be a political connection to the incident. That allegation had not been established by the fire department’s investigation.
The presence of four fire engines indicates the emergency response mounted at the warehouse after the fire was reported. Police were also present at the location as officials examined the circumstances surrounding the incident.
The latest blaze places the focus on the fire-safety arrangements at a premises that had already been linked to a fatal incident. The earlier deaths of 11 workers had made the warehouse a site of serious public concern, and the recurrence of a fire within eight months has brought those concerns back into focus.
The cause of the fire, the nature of the material stored at the site and whether the premises had adequate fire-safety arrangements will be determined through the investigation now under way. No further official findings were available in the supplied report.
