Eight fire engines took three hours to extinguish the fire in the Goregaon West district, fire officer Ashok Tarapade said. The rescue work is over and the injured have been taken to two hospitals, he added.
Media reports said the fire started in some shops on the ground floor and the smoke engulfed some floors. The cause of the fire is being investigated.
Eight people, including two minors, were killed and over 45 injured after a fire tore through a residential building in Mumbai's Goregaon area in the early hours of Friday, a civic official said. A few of the injured are in critical condition.
The blaze started around 3 am at Jay Sandesh building in Goregaon West, the BMC official said. Initially, officials had given the name of the fire-hit building as Jay Bhavani. The cause behind the fire is yet to be determined, said officials.
The fire-affected persons were rushed to a trauma centre at Jogeshwari and civic-run Cooper Hospital at Juhu, they said.
Of them, doctors declared six including two minors and as many women dead. Another person died during treatment, taking the toll to seven. Some of the injured persons are in critical condition, said officials.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis expressed grief over the incident. “Pained to know about loss of lives in the fire incident at #Goregaon, Mumbai. We are in touch with BMC & Mumbai Police officials & all the assistance is being provided. My deepest condolences to the families who lost their loved ones and wishing speedy recovery to the injured ones,” he wrote on X.
Before firefighters arrived at the scene, the blaze had covered the building from all sides. It completely gutted the shops, scrap material and two-wheelers on the ground floor, said fire officials.
It took nearly three hours for the fire brigade to extinguish the blaze. More than eight fire engines and other firefighting equipment were used in the operation, a fire official said.
BMC officials said they are trying to find out if some more victims are admitted to private hospitals.
Civic commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal is scheduled to visit the hospitals, where the injured are admitted, in some time, officials said.
The building was constructed in 2006 to house people who were shifted from a slum in Mumbai and it didn’t have proper fire fighting equipment, the Hindustan Times newspaper cited Chief Fire Officer Ravindra Ambulgekar as saying.
The smoke spread in the building through a lift duct, he said.
Fires are common in India, where building laws and safety norms are often flouted by builders and residents.
In 2022, a massive fire in a four-story commercial building in New Delhi killed at least 27 people. In 2019, a fire caused by an electrical short circuit engulfed a building in New Delhi and killed 43 people.
