A fire broke out on the fourth floor of The Times of India building in ITO on Wednesday afternoon, leading to the evacuation of hundreds of employees.
Fire fighters had to use a skylift to rescue two workers trapped on the building’s roof. However, despite around 500 employees working inside the building at that time, no one was injured in the blaze, said the fire department which received a call for help at 2.20 p.m.
Employees inside the building at the time of the blaze were alerted by the fire alarm. “We were immediately made to leave the building. Within minutes, the entire building was filled with smoke,” said an employee.
Since the building is air-conditioned, there was no vent for the smoke to escape, explained Atul Garg, Additional Director, Delhi Fire Services (DFS). Initially only four fire tenders and a skylift were rushed to the blaze site, but the blaze category was upgraded to ‘medium’ soon.
It took the fire tenders some effort to reach the site because of poorly-parked vehicles all around the building. When they did, they had to seek police’s help for crowd management as the little empty space around the building were mostly occupied by the evacuated employees, curious onlookers and journalists.
While fire destroyed much of the fourth floor that houses the offices of the newspaper’s top management, the rest of the floors were filled with dense smoke, causing trouble for the fire fighters.
“The operation took time as our fire fighters had to repeatedly come out because the breathing apparatus being carried by them were lasting only for 20-25 minutes,” said Mr. Garg.
