Andhra Pradesh - Guntur   

55 houses destroyed in fire

Staff Reporter

COLOSSAL LOSS: A woman tries to collect whatever is left in the ashes after her hut got gutted in IDWA Nagar on Guntur outskirts on Tuesday. - Photo: T. Vijaya Kumar

GUNTUR: Adavithakkelapadu is back in news within 24 hours of AP SC/ST Commission holding its first-ever hearing here with 55 houses in IDWA Colony getting destroyed in fire adjacent to Swarnabharati Nagar in Guntur on Tuesday.

The loss of property is estimated at Rs.10 lakh. Three fire tenders, two from Guntur and one from Mangalagiri, took three hours to extinguish the fire.

Except the house of M. Raghavamma, sarpanch of Adavithakkellapadu, and a handful of adjacent ones, all other thatched houses of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were gutted.

An explosion of an LPG cylinder in a house is said to be the cause of the fire.

No pattas

None of those living in the colony have pattas for the land on which they built huts and had been asking the District Collector and Guntur-II MLA Tadisetty Venkata Rao to get sites allotted for them. On Monday all the residents even represented it to the SC/ST Commission member A. Pratap Kumar.

Panchayat secretary M. Srinivasa Rao swung into action and could minimise the damage. In the process, he sustained burns on his hand.

Deputy Mayor Tadisetty Murali rushed to the site and promised the victims to get pattas allotted for all living there and pucca houses built.

RDO Venkata Subbaiah supervised relief operations.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Discom tops in overall performance
55 houses destroyed in fire
Job prospects linked to English learning
Congress men murdered

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu