Fire in GIFT City: Makeshift project office almost completely burnt, no casualty

Gandhinagar:

A fire broke out in the makeshift corporate/project office building in the GIFT city, the first IFSC in India, which. It caused extensive damage to the single storied structure and almost completely burnt it.

CEO of GIFT city Ajay Pandey said that the matter would be probed.

Chief Fire Officer of Gandhinagar Mahesh Kumar Modh said that around 90% part of the project office has been burnt down in the fire which was controlled completely after around one and a half hours of fire fighting operation involving internal fire team of GIFT and that of Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad, Kalol and privately managed water tankers.

Interestingly, a select media brief in the same building had ended a little while ago and the journalists were reportedly having lunch in canteen when the fire was spotted at around 2pm.

The fire, the exact reason of which was not yet known but was most likely triggered by short circuit, spread quickly and could not be contained by the single mini fire tender stationed in the GIFT city premises. By the time the fire tenders from Gandhinagar, a round 15 km from GIFT city, reached the spot the fire has taken a major shape.

The place where the fire occurred was only at a stone-throw distance from the two multi-storied buildings and the adjacent building where the BSE international exchange and other offices were situated. No injury or casualty fortunately happened during the incident. The whole area was cordoned off during the fire fighting operation.

Later talking to media persons CEO, GIFT city Ajay Pandey said that there were four wings of the Aspire 2 building in which the fire broke out. Of these one was almost safe.

To a query about the damage, Pandey said that it would be ascertained during detailed investigation. He said that as it was a smart and high tech city all the documents burnt during the incident of fire were already backed up in electronic format in the data recovery system. He said that all the offices including that of some banks had completely shifted.

Modh said that the gas cylinders kept in the building were removed before the spread of fire.

DeshGujarat