A stretch of 1.5 kilometers on the Hyderabad Bypass road has witnessed a third incident of fire in two months at the CNG stations albeit this time a LNG truck and a CNG storage room at the station became engulfed in blazes. These fires have claimed three lives, including one on Friday at Star CNG station where a staff’s completely burnt body was recovered after completing the extinguishing exercise.
The people residing along the bypass road near Wadhu Wah Gate woke up to the sound of deafening bang early on Friday morning. Those living in the buildings and homes near the station witnessed the inferno first hand, capturing and sharing images and videos as well.
According to the spokesman of Rescue 1122 Dilbar Halepoto, a truck filled with dozens of black coloured LNG cylinders and the station’s CNG storage room, which was also full of white-coloured cylinders, burst into flames which later spread to the CNG refilling tanks at the station. The blazes also spread to a house located next to the station but the firefighters immediately doused the fire before it could engulf other houses. The glass windows of another house were broken and batteries, used for power backup, were burnt.
A mosque and unauthorized stands of buses, vans and taxis are also located in very close proximity to the burnt CNG station. Luckily, except the station’s staff, Allah Bux Chajro, no person was directly harmed in the incident. “Sky over our house remained covered by black smoke for several hours,” Iftikhar Samo, who lives opposite to the site of the incident, told The Express Tribune.
According to him, they heard the explosion and saw the fire around 7.30am. The top officials of the district administration and the police remained tight-lipped over the incident. The Bhitai Nagar police, in whose limits the incident happened, said they will register an FIR if the family of the deceased Chajro approached them.