Hyderabad: A massive fire broke out at the Telangana state government printing press warehouse at Mint Compound in Khairatabad in the early hours of Wednesday. The fire broke out at 4.20 am following which old scrap machines, textbooks, ink buckets and other property worth lakhs of rupees were gutted.
“I received a call from the security guard at 4.29 am and alerted the police and the fire department. By the time, I reached the spot, the firefighters and DRF teams along with police officials were at the scene,” director of the government textbooks printing press S. Srinivasa Chary told Deccan Chronicle.
“The firefighters reached within minutes otherwise the newly purchased expensive machinery, the four fast 300 web machines kept close to the offset section would have also been gutted,” Srinivasa said.
“We rushed to the scene within four minutes from the Assembly fire station. Five fire tenders with over 30 firefighters spread across the fire-hit building and gained entrance from the rear door and extinguished the fire,” station fire officer K.V Nagender said adding that furniture, old machines, textbooks and other material kept in the offset section were completely gutted. “It took over three hours to take complete control over the fire,” he said.
“The building that was constructed in 1958, located on 2-acre land is the first such fire accident reported in the press since 1958,” another officer of the government press said.
The firefighters reached within minutes on being informed otherwise the situation would have been worse and had it been during day time it would have been even worse as hundreds of workers work at the press, he said.
The clues teams and Khairatabad police inspected the fire-hit building, clues teams collected the samples from the scene. Police suspect that a short circuit might have initiated the fire. A case of fire accident has been booked and police are investigating.
