Srinagar, Dec 15: For years the residents of the tourist hub of Dalgate have been demanding establishment of a fire station in the area. But the authorities not only failed to meet their demand, they even removed the access point to tap water for firefighting from the nearby Tchuntukul.
 The absence of access point to the canal, as per the Fire and Emergency Services Department (FESD) officials, hindered the firefighting operations in the old Dalgate  area earlier this week when seven residential houses were gutted there.
 The FESD In-charge Deputy Director, Muhammad Akbar Dar who monitored the firefighting operations said on reaching Dalgate they were shocked to see that there was no access point to the waterbody as it used to be in the past prior to the Dalgate road widening.
 Due to this, the FESD official said, they had to draw water from around half a kilometer away from Dal lake, which obviously took sometime.
 On the other hand the residents are up in arms against the government. The affected families including the owner of a prominent news agency Abdul Rasheed Bhat complained that nobody from the government came to their rescue.
 Bhat suffered losses worth over Rs 3 million as his house was gutted to cinder.
 The residents accused the local MLA of being callous towards the area. They appealed Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to personally look into the matter.
 “We are shelter less and nobody from the government has bothered to see our plight than to talk of any relief,” the residents said fearing they would have to spend the chilly winter under open sky.
 Meanwhile, the FESD refuted the complaints of Dalgate residents that the firefighters reached late.
 Its Joint Director RT Dubey said the firefighters reached the spot within 10 minutes of getting the news.
 “We got the first call at 12:05 AM whereas the locals have said the fire started at around 11 PM. So the fire was already there for an hour. Still we managed to control its spread in the congested area,” Dubey said adding that the fire tenders had to be parked around a kilometer away due to congestion in the area.
 He said the firefighters reached there the fire had reached an intensity of around 1200 degrees Celsius. “Still we managed to prevent its spread,” Dubey said.

Lastupdate on : Wed, 15 Dec 2010 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:00:00 IST