A fire broke out at a VLCC slimming and beauty centre on the second-floor of a six-storeyed building at the Kankurgachhi crossing on Sunday morning.

The flames and the fumes triggered a scare among residents of Kashi Niket, which has a number of shops on the ground and first floors. Among the commercial units are a jewellery outlet and a sari shop.

Police said cleaners working on the second floor and guards of the building first spotted the fire. They alerted the fire department.

Six fire tenders took an hour to control the blaze. Firemen had to break the glass façade of the VLCC centre to let the smoke out. One of the fire-fighters suffered cuts and bruises caused by glass shards.

Dense black smoke billowing out of the building could be seen from at least 500m away. Many residents of the building housing the slimming and beauty centre left their homes and rushed down to the road.

Rahul Ganguly, who lives in a flat on the fifth floor, said he rushed downstairs with his father and mother.

An employee of the beauty and slimming centre said they had tried in vain to put out the blaze with fire extinguishers. “We emptied an extinguisher but nothing really happened,” he said.

“A short circuit in a power distribution box might have triggered the fire. It spread fast because of structures made of inflammable materials such as plywood in the slimming centre,” an official said.