Furniture and machineries kept in three floors of a ready-made garment unit in Vilakkuthoon were gutted in a fire that broke out in the early hours of Sunday.
Firemen from various stations had to fight for more than five hours to put out the flames.
Deputy Director (Southern Region), P. Saravanakumar, and District Officer (Fire and Rescue), S. Kalyanakumar, supervised the fire-fighting.
With the recent death of two firemen while fighting fire in a textile shop due to a roof collapse just a few metres away from Sunday’s fire accident spot still fresh in memory, senior officials from the Department of Fire and Rescue Services did not allow their men to enter the shops in their attempt to douse the inferno.
After getting the alert at around 4.30 a.m., firemen and tenders from Madurai, Meenakshi Temple and Anupanadi fire stations rushed to the spot and started to put out the flames.
Since the buildings on different floors were kept under lock and key, the firemen had to struggle to break open the walls to spray water into the building. While the office was functioning on the first floor of a rented building, cloth cutting machineries and other materials were kept in the second and third floors.
Though the fire was brought under control at around 8.30 a.m, the firemen kept spraying water till 10 a.m. to ensure that the flames did not spread to adjacent buildings.
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