9 Killed, Many Injured in Chemical Warehouse Fire

At least nine people have been killed and several have been injured after a massive fire broke out at a chemical godown (warehouse) on Monday, according to the Hindustan Times.

The fire broke out on the first floor of a four-story building in the Bazarghat, Nampally area of Telangana's Hyderabad, South-Central India, on Monday.

The deputy commissioner of police (DCP) said that an alert was also sounded to the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), which sent two teams to the rescue operations.

According to Hyderabad's Central Zone DCP Venkateshwar Rao, the blaze was caused at around 9:30 am by a spark while repairing a car in the stilt floor, where several drums storing a chemical were also stored.

"The repair work of a car was going on in the godown on the ground floor. The sparks spread to the chemical barrel kept in the godown and caused the fire. It is an inflammable chemical stored in fibre-plastic manufacturing. Within no time, the fire engulfed other floors of the building and caused six deaths," Rao said.

“We brought the fire under control within an hour and rescued, in all, 21 persons trapped in the building and rushed them to the Osmania General Hospital,” he added.

Since the report, another three persons have died.

The extent of damage is yet to be determined.