Delhi firefighter dies battling flames

NEW DELHI - A 59-year-old fire official who was to retire next year died while fighting a blaze in a factory operating illegally here Wednesday, officials said.

Twenty-one others suffered varying degrees of burns in the horrific incident in Vishwas Nagar in east Delhi.

Firefighter Nand Kishore Tiwari, who was posted at the Lakshmi Nagar fire station, was among the first to rush to the burning factory-cum-residential complex around 2 p.m.

“The fire began in the basement,” said a fire officer, explaining what happened. A total of 23 fire tenders battled the flames.

The illegal factory in the residential complex had stored chemical drums which caught fire.

When the fire fighters forcibly opened the shutter to make their way in, there was a loud blast as the air from outside made contact with the fire in the factory premises.

Within seconds, the fire surged out in a phenomenon known as “backdraft”, sweeping away many firefighters and others from the disaster management authority, Delhi Police and the civic authority.

“Tiwari was killed on the spot,” the officer said.

Tiwari is the first Delhi firefighter to die while at work after 2004, when eight firemen died in Kirti Nagar in west Delhi.

The Delhi Fire Service, which has some 2,500 men on its rolls, is expected to pay Tiwari’s family a compensation of Rs.5 lakh.

The owner of the house-cum-illegal factory was on the run, police said.