Two fire incidents were reported in the national Capital on Monday morning. In the first incident, the seminar room in the seven-storey Emergency Block of the LNJP Hospital where a fire was reported in the early hours on Monday was locked when it had happened, and alertness and presence of mind shown by the staff of the facility averted a major incident.

According to hospital authorities, the incident took place around 12:30 am and some of our staff saw smoke coming out of the seminar room, which was locked.

“Showing alertness, they opened the room immediately and used small fire extinguishers to put it out as much as possible, until the fire tenders arrived,” said the official.

“The fire had broken out in the seminar room, located on the ground floor of the Emergency Block, and all patients were immediately shifted,” the official added.

Atul Garg, the Director of Delhi Fire Service (DFS) said that six fire tenders were rushed to the spot and no casulaity was reported while the cause of the fire was being ascertained.

“The room was locked and if our staff had not been alert, it could have turned into a big incident. Their alertness and presence of mind averted a major fire incident, as it happened in a multi-storey block. Power supply had got briefly snapped too but we shifted all the patients on that floor to another area as smoke was spreading out,” said the official of the hospital.

“The room is used for conducting training sessions for doctors and other staff. Also, our staff, be it doctors, nurses or others, have seen the most challenging times during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and so it has made them tougher I believe in handling a crisis situation,” said the hospital official.The official at the facility, located in the heart of Delhi, said the cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained but the smoke was coming out of the AC vents, indicating a short circuit may have led to it.

In another fire incident, a fire broke out at a cloth godown in Shahdara’s Gandhi Nagar early on Monday but no casualty has been reported so far.

“The fire department received a call about a fire at a cloth godown around 2.25 AM following which nine fire tenders were rushed to the spot,” said the DFS official.

The basement, ground, first floor and some spaces of the stairs which were filled with clothes caught fire, he said, adding the cause of the blaze is being as ascertained.