HYDERABAD: A fire broke out in the store room of forest department’s complex, located on Autobahn Road, on Thursday evening.

It was extinguished by Rescue-1122 officials and personnel in about four-hour-long battle with the blaze.

According to the officials, the fire has weakened the store room’s ceiling.

They said the fire broke out at around 1:20am.

A divisional officer of the department, Imran Bhutto, said that the store room was being used to dump all sorts of scrap belonging to its offices.

He clarified that no record of forestland was present inside. The ceiling was damaged and its pieces had fallen down due to the fire, but the overall structure remained intact.

He said that initially, the fire was brought under control but it erupted again because mostly wooden furniture was present in the room.

A senior officer, Zulfiqar Memon, also confirmed to Dawn that no forestland record was kept in the store room. “Only papers and files of old correspondence was destroyed by the fire,” he said, and explained that the record of the riverine area forestlands had already been digitised and preserved in the record of rights.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2026