Mumbai restaurant fire kills 14
 

MUMBAI: At least 14 people were killed when a huge blaze tore through a popular restaurant in Mumbai early on Friday, police said, in the latest disaster to raise concerns over fire safety in India.
The fire was extinguished in the early hours but the agency?s reporter at the scene said the rooftop where the party was taking place had been gutted, with blackened ice buckets and ashtrays strewn around.
Many of the victims were young women who were attending a birthday party on the rooftop when the fire broke out. Doctors said they died of asphyxiation, apparently as they tried to flee the burning building. Local media reported that a false ceiling had collapsed in the four-storey building in the Indian financial capital, trapping people inside as they tried to escape.
?Fourteen people have succumbed to their injuries and remaining victims have been discharged from the KEM hospital. Most of the deaths were due to asphyxiation,? Avinash Supe, dean of the local KEM hospital told. Eleven of the victims were women, and survivors said people had become trapped in the restroom when the fire broke out. ?The ladies? washroom was far away from the exit so many women died due to asphyxiation,? Torel Thakur told the agency at the Bhatia Hospital in Mumbai, where her husband was being treated for burns.
?Nobody inside the washroom could have survived.? Her husband Pratik Thakur described panicked scenes as the fire broke out. ?When the fire intensified, people were running and screaming for help and it was very chaotic,? he said. ?Most of the people didn?t know about fire exit and started jumping over each other.?Police said they were investigating the cause of the fire, and had filed a preliminary case against the restaurant?s owners. Five city officials have been suspended for negligence in connection with the fire, the Press Trust of India news agency reported, without giving further details. No one was immediately available to confirm the report. Accidental fires are common across India because of poor safety standards and lax enforcement of regulations.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/com/cwEr/~4/NxZ-U2QDe5Y

أكثر...