Wooden interiors, lack of ventilation exacerbated fire at Gulzar Houz building in Hyderabad

Hyderabad: The wooden interiors of the Gulzar Houz building, combined with a lack of proper ventilation, led to thick smoke spreading to the first floor, which resulted in the deaths of the trapped people.

“The interiors were done with heavy use of wood. This led to thick smoke,” fire officials told the media.

Firefighters told TOI that there was no spread of fire on the first and second floors, and only diffusion of smoke. “When we verified, we found that the whole wiring on the first and second floors got burnt, and this released smoke. A similar situation occurred with the air-conditioning,” Assistant District Fire Officer Mohammed Rafi told TOI. After speaking to the locals, officials came to know that residents of this building had encountered this problem of wires getting burnt in the past too.

The victims were in three different rooms, and fire department officials suspect that most of them might have died in their sleep after inhaling the smoke. All doors and windows were locked, and there was little open ventilation. Due to this, fire officials had to drill a hole in a wall to start firefighting.

“Since there is no gap between the adjoining buildings, we found it hard to gain entry. Once we drilled a hole to go inside, we saw that the interior of the building was already filled with thick plumes of smoke, making it extremely difficult for firefighters to even stand for two minutes,” Rafi said. Officials suspect that the parking of a couple of two-wheelers in the narrow entrance on the ground floor might have also aggravated the fire due to the fuel in the vehicles.