A fire broke out in a garment shop-cum-godown on the ground floor of a four-storey building near the Joramandir bus stop off VIP Road on Thursday morning.

Residents were asked to evacuate the building as firemen tried to douse the flames, a fire officer said. It took two fire engines and about 30 minutes to bring the fire under control.

Police said no one was trapped or injured in the fire.

Traffic on VIP Road near the Joramandir bus stop was held up for some time to give fire engines an easy access.

As the building is in a narrow lane, the first fire engine that responded to the distress call had to turn back and a small engine arrived a few minutes later, the fire officer said.

Residents of the building were the first to spot dense black smoke billowing out of the shop and they alerted the fire brigade.

“We reached within 10 minutes. But we faced problems as our fire engine was too wide to enter the narrow lane… we had to call in another small fire engine. The fire was doused within 30 minutes,” the fire officer said.

The fire broke out a few minutes after 11am, Srikumar Majumdar who stays on the second floor of the building said. “We saw dense smoke coming out of the shop and ran out.”

Almost all residents of the building had been experiencing electrical problems and they had had a local electrician check out the lines. He had suggested a complete overhaul of the wiring system, Majumdar said. “We were supposed to discuss this in our next meeting but the fire broke out before that.”

Birendra Sharma, the owner of the shop-cum-godown, said he had kept his shop closed for the past eight days because of low stock.

“We did not have much stock left; so, we had kept the shop closed. We were waiting for a fresh consignment of goods before opening the shop,” Sharma said.

Preliminary investigations showed a short circuit in a meter box inside the shop triggered the fire, a fire officer said.