Mumbai blaze: 72-year-old woman dies after re-entering smoke-filled flat in Goregaon building

MUMBAI: A 72-year-old woman lost her life after a fire broke out in a ground plus 24 storeyed building at Goregaon East at around 7.30 pm. According to the fire brigade, the fire broke out in a flat on the sixth floor of Lakshachandi Heights, Gokuldham colony on Krishna Vatika marg at Goregaon (E).

"Prima facie, according to information provided to us, a curtain caught fire due to a lamp in the house. The deceased Indu Singh and her house-help were present in the house, when the fire broke out and they initially managed to get out of the flat. However, the senior citizen went back into the house and could not get out due to smoke logging. Our personnel wearing breathing apparatus managed to get the deceased, who had collapsed near the door of the flat, out. She was administered first aid and moved to the hospital. However, the doctors at Lifeline Hospital declared her dead probably due to suffocation injuries," said a fire brigade personnel.

"My uncle Tarkeshwar Singh was out for an evening walk in the building compound, when the fire broke out, my uncle and others reached the flat and got my aunt and the househelp out. But my aunt for some reason went back to the flat and could not come out as she must have panicked, as she is a senior citizen and there was a lot of heat and heavy smoke logging. My uncle is a retired doctor and my aunt was a housewife. The couple did not have children, but our family members were around for them," said Gaurav Singh, a nephew of the victim, who lived in another wing of the same apartment complex.

"The building had a functional fire fighting system, but the sprinklers were outside the flats and not within, as the building was built prior to 2005," Singh added.

According to fire brigade officials, who were led by Deputy CFO Harish Girkar and ADFO Manohar Nagapurkar, the fire was confined to the flat, there was heavy smoke logging on the fifth, sixth and seventh floors of the building.

"Our personnel assisted many of the residents of the lower floors to come down the staircase, while the residents of the upper floors either stayed put in their flats or went to the staircase. The fire fighting system was functional and we managed to lay a line with it," said a fire brigade official.