By IANS
Lucknow : A big blaze that took nearly 10 hours to be brought under control left 130 people homeless and gutted as many as about 19 plywood manufacturing units here Thursday.
The fire broke out Wednesday night and continued to simmer even after 10 hours until Thursday morning.
The inferno engulfed nearly 100 hutments in a neighbouring slum. No loss of human life was reported, but about some 100 families of rag pickers were rendered homeless.
Even as fire combat teams were still grappling with the Aishbagh blaze, another fire broke out in the sprawling Zee Mall here in the afternoon, leading to much commotion in Lucknow’s posh Gomti Nagar locality.
However, timely action by mall security officials helped in extinguishing the fire.
In both cases, the fire was blamed on electrical short circuit.
Lucknow district magistrate Chandra Bhanu said: “The loss caused on account of the plywood factory blaze was estimated to run into crores.”
“The presence of wood in the area set a kind of chain reaction to engulf a huge area in flames. We are giving a cash compensation of Rs.1,800 to each affected family whose shacks were destroyed in the fire.”
Bhanu, who spent almost the whole night supervising the fire fighting operations, described it as a “huge inferno”.