A major fire broke out at the Hill Colony area of Dhanbad on Friday, damaging electricity cables worth crores before five fire tenders doused the blaze.

The fire, which broke out just 100 metres away from Rail DSP Sajid Khan’s house in an open space, soon spread over several parts of the colony due to which residential quarters were evacuated.

The cause of the fire, which broke out at 12:30 pm, has not been known yet, but officials suspect that a short circuit was the reason behind it.

The damaged cables were property of the signalling and telecom department of Dhanbad Division of East Central Railway. Divisional Railway Manager Ashish Bansal and other senior railway officials reached the site to supervise the fire-fighting operation.

Firefighters and locals try to douse the blaze at Hill Colony in Dhanbad on Friday. Picture by Gautam Dey

Ashok Jha, a resident of the colony said, “The railway division has been carrying out maintenance work in the area due to which huge stock of cables have been brought here. These were lying scattered at several places and the fire spread so soon due to it.”

Jha feared that the fire could have done more damage had it broken out in the night.

“The residents of the colony were frightened due to fire but the timely intervention of the fire control department helped control it,” he said.

DSP Sajid khan said a lot of people had witnessed the fire from far-off places, which helped in timely information to the fire department.