Fire at Noida's IndianOil building, 4 injured
New Delhi   31-Aug-2008
Four maintenance staff was seriously injured when they leapt from the fourth floor of Noida’s IndianOil office building in Sector 1, to evade a raging fire on Saturday evening. All of them suffered multiple fractures. They probably survived their falls because they leaped onto a green patch on the ground. All the injured were rushed to Kailash Hospital. Police said a ‘‘systems failure’’ appeared to have occurred, as the building is equipped with a sophisticated and elaborate fire control system. According to fire department sources, they received a call about the fire at 7.10 pm. “we rushed five fire tenders to the spot. As many as 17 more were called in from Ghaziabad, Delhi and units of some multi-national companies. The cause of the fire is likely to have been a short circuit. It is fortunate that it was a holiday, or things could be much worse.” The incident happened when the four saw the fire on the fourth floor. They rushed up to check and got encircled in the fire when they chose to leap. This office is the headquarters of IndianOil’s national pipeline system. Police chief RK Chaturvedi said, “There definitely appears to have been a system failure. On paper, the building’s fire control system is so sensitive that cigarette smoke would set off an alarm and sprinklers. This obviously did not happen. The pressure pumps and the rest of the system also started to work very late. It is fortunate the fire did not spread to the upper five floors.” Asked why the fire department had not checked the functioning of the system, a fire official said, “We can test a system to see if it works well. But we cannot maintain it ourselves.”