4 member committee to probe Kamala building fire incident

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A four-member committee has been formed to probe the Kamala building fire incident which resulted in multiple casualties in Mumbai, Maharashtra, on Sunday said an order from Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). The investigation will be presided over by a deputy municipal commissioner level officer and a report will be submitted to the BMC commissioner in 15 days, the order stated. A massive fire broke out inside the 20-storey Kamala building in Mumbai on Saturday morning. The incident claimed the lives of six people and left 23 injured. The firefighting officials received the first information about the fire at 7.28am. It took the fire brigade about two and a half hours to bring the level 3 (massive) fire under control and almost five hours to fully douse it.

It was the fourth high-rise fire in three months in Mumbai to have resulted in casualties.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an ex-gratia of ₹2 lakh each from Prime Minister's National Relief Fund (PMNRF) for the kin of those who lost their lives. He also announced ₹50,000 for injured persons.

The Uddav Thackrey government also announced a compensation of ₹5 lakh for the family of the deceased and assured proper investigation into the incident. "The fire incident that occurred at the Kamala building in Mumbai's Tardeo area will be investigated. Our guardian minister of Mumbai Suburban Aaditya Thackeray and Mumbai City guardian minister Aslam Shaikh will look into it," deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar said in a statement on Saturday.

According to fire department officials, the firefighting system at the Tardeo’s Kamla building, also known as Sachinam Heights building, was not operational at the time of the fire. "The internal firefighting system of the building was not working, and the building has not even submitted its biannual fire safety audit to the fire brigade," said Hemant Parab, chief fire officer of the Mumbai fire brigade.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)