Fire destroyed around 1,000 slum in Mumbai;1 killed

A huge fire activated due to gas cylinder blasts at Damu Nagar slum in Mumbai’s Kandivali on Monday in which one people killed while at least 1,000 homes destroyed. “The body was burnt beyond recognition. It was difficult to say about the burnt body, it is male or female’’ a police constable said. One of the women has sustained severe burn injuries, police said. According to the fire brigade control room, the fire started around at 12.30pm. 16 fire tenders and nine water tankers sent to spot for control the fire. Fire officials had to struggle to contain the fire and could douse it only at 3.10pm. Presently fire is under control,” Fatehsingh Patil, additional commissioner of police, north region, said. The fire in the slum, which is on collector land and shares one of its boundaries with a godown, is suspected to have spread after a gas leak, fire brigade sources said. Members of the NSS and civil defence struggled to control the crowd as panic gripped the locality. In June, a fire in a high-rise apartment block in Mumbai killed seven people after they became trapped in a lift on the upper floors. A month earlier four senior officers from a Mumbai fire brigade died in a blaze at another building.