An elderly woman was rescued and brought down with the help of an aluminium ladder from her third-floor flat at Balaka Abasan in Mahisbathan, near New Town, after a fire broke out in her kitchen on Thursday afternoon, a fire department official said.
Gita Rani Ghosh, 87, was sitting on a bed when the fire broke out.
Neighbours who spotted the fire rushed to the third floor and used an aluminium ladder to get her out of the flat.
Parichay Dey, who lives in a flat that faces Ghosh’s, said he had alerted other neighbours and an electrician — Mohan Pramanik — who was working in an adjacent building.
Pramanik and a few residents of the building propped up the aluminium ladder to the balcony of the third-floor apartment as the building’s staircase was too narrow to rescue the elderly woman and bring her down to the ground floor.
Balaka Abasan, where the fire broke out on Thursday
Ghosh, after she was brought down, complained of breathlessness. She was taken to Bidhannagar Sub-divisional Hospital.
Samiran Basak, station officer of the Sector V fire station, said they received an alert around 2pm and despatched two fire engines to the housing complex.
“The firemen came to know that six residents, including a two-and-a-half-yearold boy, had taken shelter on the roof of the building,” Basak said.
“There was an explosion while we were fixing the fire hoses. The intensity of the flames increased after that. We then sprayed water on other parts of the building to ensure the fire did not spread.”
The fire was doused in less than 30 minutes. “It seems the fire started from a gas stove,” Basak. The residents who took shelter on the roof came down after the fire was doused. “We were lucky that the fire did not spread to the roof,” said Sujata Keshri, among those who took shelter on the roof