At least five shanties were gutted and two damaged in a fire that broke out in a cluster of tenements in Jyotinagar on the fringe of New Town on Monday afternoon.
At least five families lost nearly all their belongings in the fire, police said.
Rumpa Das, a Class XI student at Jyangra Adarsha Vidyalaya, said she could not save her books.
“I don’t know what to do now. I will talk to my teachers and let them know that all my books and copies with notes have been destroyed,” she said.
Many residents tried to put out the flames using buckets of water before fire tenders reached.
Four fire tenders took nearly an hour to douse the flames, the police said.
No one was injured as residents spotted smoke and alerted their neighbours and everyone could come out of their homes, said an officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate.
A fire department official said fire tenders could barely manage to get to the shanties because the lane leading to the tenements was narrow.
“Fortunately the fire hoses were long enough and we could reach the area where the burning shanties were located and douse the flames before they spread,” said the
official.
The tenements stand cheek by jowl in the area.