Government to bear medical expense of injured, Banna visit site
Ranchi, February 1: Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Wednesday announced that the state government will allocate a compensation of Rs 4 lakh rupees to the families of those who lost their life in the Ashirwad apartment fire in Dhanbad and for other past accidents.
Soren also directed the district administration to provide proper treatment and other facilities to the people injured in the accident at government’s expense.
The chief minister had expressed deep shock and condoled the fire tragedy in Dhanbad.
Later in the evening, state health minister Banna Gupta who also holds the disaster management portfolio reached Dhanbad and visited the site of the fire mishap along with district administration officials and also visited the private hospitals where the burn injured are undergoing treatment and also interacted with patients.
At least 14 people, including women and children, were charred to death on Tuesday after a major fire broke out on the second floor of ‘Ashirwad Tower’ in the Joraphatak area, around 160 km from the state capital Ranchi.
Family members, who lost their near and dear ones in the devastating multi-storey building fire found it difficult to identify charred bodies at a hospital in Dhanbad, officials said.
The bodies were kept in a mortuary at Shahid Nirmal Mahto Medical College for post-mortem, a district official informed.
The district authorities have directed the medical college to conduct post-mortem examinations of the burnt bodies.
Dhanbad Deputy commissioner Sandeep Singh said the rescue operation was completed late on Tuesday and a total of 14 people were injured in the blaze, apart from those charred to death.
Authorities of Patliputra Nursing Home, where the injured were undergoing treatment, claimed that a total of 18 people were admitted to the health facility and most of them were released.
One person is still under treatment, a health facility official said.
“Most of them had faced suffocation problems and they were released at night”, said a doctor of the nursing home situated near ‘Ashirwad Tower’.
The health facility supplied water to douse the blaze and joined the rescue operation.
“The multi-storey building has been cordoned off, and investigations are on to ascertain the exact cause of the fire,” a district official said.
Bank More Police Station Officer-in-Charge PK Singh said initial reports suggest that a curtain caught fire from the flames of an earthen lamp in one of the flats of the building.
The Jharkhand High Court on Wednesday took suo motu cognizance of the Dhanbad high-rise fire tragedy in which 14 people were charred to death.
A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh and Justice Deepak Roshan issued a notice to the state government in the incident.