HYDERABAD: Two factories were gutted by high-intensity fires while some houses and a government girls high school were partially damaged in two separate incidents because of short circuits on Wednesday. No casualty was, however, reported.

The first fire broke out in a plastic factory (United Plastic Factory) at around 5am, engulfing it in no time and raged for some hours. It is located in a richly-populated and congested area of Tando Agha, Phulelli.

It also partially damaged the walls and some portions of a few houses, including that of the house of a retired DIG jails and Government Girls Mehran High School.

“The factory makes polythene bags and had a large stock of plastic beads as raw material and machinery, but all were burnt completely. Only some sacks of the raw material were taken out by neighbours in the early morning,” a neighbour, Asim Mirza, said.

According to neighbours and area police, factory owner Mohammad Ali Qureshi along with his family lives at the first floor; they were sleeping when the fire broke out. The neighbours and police rescued the family and took them out of the structure.

Fire tenders took around five hours to extinguish the blaze at around 11am and cooling process took another two hours.

Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (HMC) fire brigade chief officer Shahab Ikram said that he had also called fire tenders of Qasimabad Municipal Com­m­ittee and Hyderabad Cant­on­ment Board. Seven fire tenders participated in extinguishing the high-intensity fire.

He said chemical foam was used with water to control the raging fire while the roof of the factory’s godown collapsed during the operation, but no one was injured.

He said there was acute shortage of hydrants in Hyderabad as there were only three, two of Wasa and the third a private one.

Sindh Environmental Pro­t­ec­­tion Agency (Sepa) deputy director Munir Ahmed Abbasi sent a team and got a report from the team that the factory was unauthorised as per Sindh Environmental Protection Act 2014.

He said that it had no fire extinguishing and emergency plans in case of any incident. He claimed that the fire occurred due to some electric short circuit as per an initial report.

Police said Mohammad Ali (owner) and his partner Naveed ran this business, but their whereabouts were unknown so far. The family of Mohammad Ali left the upper-story house of the factory soon after the fire and locked it.

Fully-charged area people complained that this factory and other ones in the locality must be sealed and removed from the residential area forthwith.

The second high-intensity fire broke out at around 7.15am and destroyed ano­ther factory (Super Food Industries) situated at Hyderabad SITE area. Fac­tory owner Gurmukh Das told Dawn that a short circuit might be its cause. He said the entire machinery, structure of the factory and large stock of plastic sacks were completely burnt.

“It is a paddy and rice (IRRI-6) processing unit and I have to suffer an estimated loss of Rs50 million, but I am still estimating colossal losses,” he said.

He said that some fire tenders reached the factory and controlled the fire at around 2.30pm, but there was much heat in the factory till filing of this story at 7.30pm.

Fire officer Shahab Ikram said that three fire tenders and one bowser (which has water of four fire tenders) took part in extinguishing the fire.

Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2019