A senior railway official who has his office on the 13th floor of New Koilaghat building on Strand Road recalled the moment he saw fire in one of the rooms on the same floor. The flames gradually engulfed everything, including files he had been maintaining for the last four decades.

The official, who was reluctant to be named, has been working in the same building for the last 40 years. He narrated to The Telegraph the last minutes he spent at the signal and telecom department office of the Eastern Railways before he was forced to leave and run on Monday night.

Someone raised the alarm that there was a fire on our floor. There was something frantic about the cries of “fire, fire”. I saw some of my colleagues and RPF men rushing towards the room where the fire was reported. It was the laboratory where our communication devices and electronic equipment are repaired.

There was panic everywhere. People were running, mostly rushing out of the office. My instinct was also to run. But what will happen to all these files that I have created with so much of hard work and dedication? I decided against my instincts and started to wrap the files which were kept open on my table.

In the meantime, the commotion increased. I saw RPF men use extinguishers. But the fire was still raging. I made haste. By the time I packed everything into the cupboard and locked it to my satisfaction, the smoke had reached me.

Some of my colleagues and I started out on the staircase. The flight of stairs was directly below the room that had caught fire. The staircase was also getting filled with smoke by then. I had walked down the flight of stairs so many times in the past. But yesterday was so different.

As smoke was fast filling this staircase and there were so many people trying to get down, on reaching the 10th floor, I availed of another staircase that took me to the rear part of the building.

Some of my colleagues and I were out in the open, thanking our lucky stars that we managed to come out unhurt. Just then, I glanced up and saw that flames were raging out of the windows on the floor that had been my office for so many years now. It was a shocking sight. The flames had grown so suddenly. I also realised how close I had been to getting trapped had I not moved on time.

I searched for my friends and colleagues. One of them who had started with us, had apparently gone up again, I learned. He was rescued sometime later with facial burns.

As I started for home, shocked with the sudden development in the last one hour, the only consolation I had was that I had kept all my files safely in the cupboard.

As I reached home, I saw on television the fire had spread across the floor. My heart sank. Today I have realised that nothing is left.

All the hours I had put in to create the files are gone forever. I have nothing much to look forward to. For me, it is a personal loss. Maybe it was the evening Ganges breeze that we had been enjoying on the 13th floor that engulfed our office last night.