A tanker carrying methyl alcohol caught fire, overturned and went up in flames on CR Avenue early on Wednesday.
The driver fled but his help was charred to death inside the cabin, police said.
The blaze spread to at least two adjacent buildings.
One of them was badly damaged but fortuitously it was old and had no residents. Shops on the ground floor of the building were destroyed. Portions of an adjoining building were affected, too.
The fire was reported around 5.10am, not far from Mohammad Ali Park.
An eyewitness who lives a few minutes away from the site of the crash said he was one of the first persons to reach the spot.
“A few women who run a roadside eatery raised the alarm when they saw that the rear of a fuel tank had caught fire. They screamed. The tanker driver tried to stop the vehicle but hit a lamppost. Almost immediately one of the tyres burst and the vehicle tilted towards the left before overturning,” said Bipin Ganatra.
Ten fire tenders were pressed into action to douse the flames.
The police said the methyl alcohol was being transported from Budge Budge, in South 24-Parganas. The destination is not clear yet because the papers supposed to be in the vehicle are believed to have been reduced to ashes.
An officer at Jorasanko police station — the accident spot is in the area it looks after — said a large quantity of the chemical spilled on the road. A smaller quantity is still left in the tanker and it will be used for chemical examination to confirm the nature of the compound.
“The entire vehicle was destroyed within 10-15 minutes,” the officer said.
The police said the driver’s help was trapped inside the cabin. “Avay Tiwari, 31, was a resident of Budge Budge. By the time the flames could be doused, he had been charred to death,” said an officer at the police station.
Remains of his body were taken to the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital.
Lalti Fouzdar, a resident of Salt Lake, owns a medical equipment shop housed on the ground of the less affected of the two buildings. She said a portion of her shop was damaged.
“We received information from the caretaker of the building and rushed to the spot. We reached there around 7.30am. By then, the old abandoned building had been engulfed in flames. Luckily, there were no occupants inside,” Fouzdar told Metro on Wednesday evening.
She said she saw a truck on fire, too. It was stationed along the road waiting to load a decorators’ materials for an event. The truck was empty when it caught fire.
The tanker and the truck were later removed and seized by the police.
The police said the vehicles will undergo forensic examinations to ascertain the cause of the fire.
“We will also examine local CCTV cameras to check the sequence of events leading to the fire and thereafter,” said an officer.