Fire tenders reached SBI Colony in Devarachikkanahalli within six minutes of receiving the first phone call about the fire on Tuesday.
But narrow roads prevented them from accessing the Ashrith Aspire apartment complex where an inferno was raging in flat number 210.
By the time the fire tenders made their way to the fire site, precious time had been lost. The floor on which the flat is located was also made inaccessible by thick and asphyxiating smoke.
The road leading to the apartment is narrow, and it gets really difficult for ambulances or fire tenders to turn and move, said a local resident.
Firefighters then made a quick decision: they deployed an aerial ladder platform to reach the height of the flat and spray water. "It (the ladder) is used when the place of fire is inaccessible or located at great height and all entries are cut off," Amar Kumar Pandey, DGP, Fire and Emergency Services, told reporters.
The first phone call to the fire brigade was made by Priyanka, a resident of the apartment. She was drawn to the fire site by people shouting and running frantically in the corridors.
"As soon as I heard the commotion and people yelling 'fire, fire', I called up the fire brigade, took my kid and ran out," she told DH.
By the time fire tenders arrived, flat number 210 was gutted, she said.
"It appears to be an explosion due to a gas leak. But we will ascertain the actual cause of the fire,” said Joshi Srinath Mahadev, DCP (SouthEast).
Fifty firefighters battled for nearly two and a half hours to put out the fire and clear out the smoke from the gutted flats. “Each fire tender has a capacity of 4,500 litres of water. Three of them exhausted their water. The fourth emptied a quarter of its capacity," said a fireman.
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