Mumbai:
Another two bodies were discovered on Friday at Mumbai's Mantralaya or secretariat, pushing the death toll from the 12-hour long fire to five. Six people are in hospital.
The Crime Branch of the Mumbai Police has been assigned to investigate what caused the massive fire, and whether basic safety rules had been violated at the headquarters of the state government. Already, evidence suggests lapses that made a bad situation drastically worse. Fire extinguishers inside the building did not work. It took an hour for the water sprinklers inside to kick into action.
(Watch mobile video of fire on Mantralaya's sixth floor)In the parking lot outside, cars had been left parked in such a haphazard way that fire engines found it tough to get to the building while flames leapt across the fifth, sixth and seventh floors.
"When we reached the spot we found no fire officer from the Mantralaya to guide us inside, " said SV Joshi, Chief Fire Officer of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, adding, "Fire audit is the prerogative of the government. The last audit conducted in 2007."
(Mantralaya fire: Bravery of fire fighters on display) The chief minister and his deputy worked out of here. 5000 people, half of them visitors to government departments housed in the Mantralaya, were in the building when the fire began at 2.40 pm.
Sources say that in 2007, an audit conducted by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation had alerted the government to the fact that its headquarters were flirting with disaster. That report, presented to Home Minister RR Patil, had said that the fire alarms and extinguishers were defunct. No action was apparently taken.
(Did Mantralaya flout safety norms?)The last of the flames were put out early this morning by fire-fighters who worked through the night at the seven-storey building. Officials said "cooling operations" will continue for the next two days.
All ministers have been asked to cancel tours. The Chief Minister's Office as also the Deputy Chief Minister's will remain in the annexe building. Most administrative offices will operate from the nearby GT Hospital.
Reacting to reports that important documents had been destroyed in the fire, Employment Guarantee Scheme Minister Nitin Raut said over three lakh files in Mantralaya have already been scanned and they are on the main server.
Documents related to the Adarsh Building Scam, which has implicated several important politicians and bureaucrats, had been handed over to the CBI months ago, the chief minister said, suggesting that the investigation into the scam would not be affected. The Adarsh building was meant to house war widows and veterans; its flats were instead assigned to families of ministers and bureaucrats. Environmental and other clearances had been ignored.