A major fire broke out at the Wadarwadi slum cluster in the city’s Shivajinagar suburb area early on March 19, gutting around 20 shanties and causing significant material damage.
Authorities said there was no loss to life in the blaze which is believed to have been caused by a cylinder explosion sometime after 1.30 a.m.
“We received a call a little after 2 a.m. today that a big fire had broken out in the Wadarwadi slums. We rushed around 15 fire-fighting vehicles, including three tankers and three Quick Response Vehicles (QRV). Prima facie, the blaze appears to have been caused by a cylinder explosion,” said a fire department official.
Prashant Ranpise, the Pune Municipal Corporation’s chief fire officer, said that around 40-50 fire-fighting personnel were involved in dousing the blaze.
“It was a major fire and we had to spray water from four sides to get the blaze under control. We managed to quell the flames after an hour of fierce fire-fighting, after 3 a.m.,” he said.
In November 2018, a fire, which was caused due to a gas cylinder explosion, rapidly engulfed scores of tinderbox slum-houses in the city’s heavily crowded Patil Estate area. Around hundred shanties were estimated to have been charred as fire-fighters faced a harrowing time in navigating the narrow slum lanes and get their fire hoses close to the nerve-centre of the blaze.
