JOIN USNight fire guts ground floor of hotel near Trinity Circle; no casualties
An accidental fire gutted the ground floor of a well-known hotel in central Bengaluru on Monday night, causing widespread damage and panic. But except for minor injuries to a few people, there were no casualties, fire and police officers said.
The fire is believed to have originated in an SUV parked in the ground-floor parking lot of the four-storeyed Ajantha Trinity Inn, located near Trinity Circle, off MG Road. It was first noticed by passing motorists around 11.15 pm. The ground floor was in flames while other floors were just filled with smoke. There was also a loud noise.
An auto-rickshaw driver called the fire brigade at 11.22 pm. Three fire tenders were dispatched to the hotel.
“When we arrived, we noticed flames in the parking lot, a few rooms and the reception, all on the ground floor. Two vehicles in the parking lot were also burning,” a senior officer in the fire brigade said. “We suspect that the fire broke out in a Mahindra Bolero in the parking lot."
One team of firefighters attended to the burning vehicles while another team rushed to other parts of the building to find out if anyone had been trapped in.
The second team found a total of six people in the building: two on the second floor and four more on the terrace. All were rescued. Two of these six people sustained minor injuries to their hands while trying to break the windowpane to escape the fire. A seventh person, stuck on the second floor, managed to come out on his own, said a Halasuru police officer.
The fire on the ground floor burnt the electric wires, causing a short circuit in the entire building. It also destroyed furniture and other goods on the ground floor, said the fire brigade officer.
Firefighters were able to control the flames by 1.15 am, preventing them from spreading to the entire building and an adjacent fuel station.
The auto driver who called the fire brigade said he and other passersby were drawn by the sound of “some blast”. They looked for the source of the blast but didn’t notice the fire. “We then saw a man descending from the second floor. We thought he was a thief trying to escape. When we surrounded him, he pleaded not to be hurt and told us about the fire,” Firoz Khan, the auto driver, told DH.
According to Khan, he soon learnt that two more people were on the second floor while another four had run to the terrace. He surmised that they couldn’t run out because they were drunk.
The hotel has rooms on all the four floors but only one was occupied as there were no bookings since September 1. Three men, said to be the hotel owner’s friends from Mysuru, had checked in around 10.15 p m, said Sudarshan, the hotel manager. The SUV belonged to the three guests.