A chemical shop on the third floor of Mehta Building caught fire on Tuesday afternoon.

Mehta Building — a five-storey property on a congested Ezra Street — houses around 1,000 shops, a majority of them being medicine wholesale shops and godowns.

A pungent smell along with smoke was detected around 4pm, police said.

Shop owners soon spotted flumes billowing out of a chemical shop on the third floor.

The store was locked and the owner had to be informed before the firefighting could start.

Eight fire tenders were pressed into action.

The police said no one was trapped inside the building.

“A group of shop owners who spotted the fire were the first to react and run to the affected shop with fire extinguishers. A few minutes later, the fire brigade arrived,” said Momen Mullick, who owns a medicine shop on the ground floor and a godown on the
third.

The fire that was contained in the shop took a few hours to be extinguished.

State fire and emergency services department minister Sujit Bose visited the spot.

“I have alerted the shop owners to be cautious. Earlier also there was a fire in this building. I gave them the NOC even after that because it was related to the livelihood of so many people,” Bose said.

A fire department official said a forensic team would visit the spot to ascertain the exact cause of the fire once the cooling process was complete.

The Mehta Building had caught fire in 2008 and it took several hours to douse
the flames.