The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Shop employee dies as petrol cans catch fire

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Aug 27, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Shop employee dies as petrol cans catch fire

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, AUG. 26. A 38-year-old man died in agony today after being badly burned by blaze in a Triplicane High Road complex where petrol cans were stored.

The victim, Kannan, was employed in a shop in the complex, where petrol was sold in one-litre bottles. The 38-year-old was filling up a five-litre can with petrol in a cramped passageway on the ground floor where nine barrels, four of them filled with petrol, were stored when the fire broke out. Shocked eyewitnesses said he ran out of the building with his body aflame before collapsing on the road.

People working in nearby shops put out the fire before Kannan was rushed to the Government Royapettah Hospital. The victim, who had sustained 90 per cent burns, died in the evening.

Though firemen and police were not aware of the exact cause of fire, they said a carelessly flung cigarette stub might have sparked it off.

`Ceylon' Vijayendran, a film actor, who was staying in one of the rooms of the complex, jumped to safety from the second floor. He has been admitted to hospital with injuries, but is reported to be out of danger.

Officers of the Fire Services and Rescue department said the barrels were piled one on top of another along the narrow passage between the complex and an adjacent building. They said they had tried to put out flames, which were several metres high with water initially. It was only after realising that the fire was petrol-fed, did they spray foam to put it out.

Miraculous escape

The accident took place around 8.30 a.m., when the Triplicane High Road was busy with pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Scores of people had a miraculous escape for nearly 1,000 litres of petrol went up in a huge blaze.

The officers said that as the barrels were placed in the open space in the narrow confines of the lane, it did not spread to the sides.

Zam Bazaar police said the petrol was stored illegally; they could not say whether it was being adulterated there. No arrests had been made, they added.

Firemen said that after today's accident, the Fire Control Room received several calls from people from across the city about the sale of petrol in plastic bottles. The callers stressed that the stores selling them were potential hazards.

Four people have been killed in fires in the past five days. On Saturday, an eight-month-old girl was killed in a slum fire at Ernavur near Ennore.

On Tuesday, two Sri Lankan women tourists were killed in a fire that broke out in a cloth store on Kennet Lane, Egmore. In this case, Egmore police arrested Yogesh, owner of the cloth store and registered a case under Section 304 A (causing death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code against him.

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