Close to thousand employees had to be evacuated after a fire broke out on the third floor of Globsyn Crystals building in EP block of Sector V, Salt Lake, on Thursday afternoon.

The fire was first spotted at 12.30pm and the building’s in-built fire management system alerted employees as well as security guards.

All employees were evacuated in time and no one was injured.

The building’s security office called the fire brigade and a couple of fire tenders from the Sector V fire station arrived within minutes.

Sprinklers were activated in the corridors of the 11-storey building and that prevented the flames from spreading, a fire services officer said.

Employees working inside the offices were alerted by the fire alarm. Security guards on all the floors went to every office and asked everyone to move towards the fire exit and not to panic, a security officer of the building said.

Partha Roy, an employee of Renaissance Info Web Pvt Ltd that has its office on the fifth floor of the building, said he heard the fire alarm go off and minutes later security guards came running, asking everyone to leave the building through the fire exit.

“The alarm was blaring and the guards told us to leave our bags and get out of the building as fast as we could. Some of us headed towards the elevators but they were not working. We had to climb down the stairs. We saw dense smoke on the third floor,” Roy.

Priyabrota Deb, a Globsyn employee, said he saw several people run out of the Café Coffee Day and the KFC outlets after being alerted by security guards.

Soon, a crowd had gathered around the building, a two-minute walk from Webel, that houses several IT and telecom offices along with at least eight restaurants, pubs and a coffee shop.

Security guards and police had to repeatedly tell onlookers not to go too near the building as the firefighters had to break the glass façade, sending shards all around.

“We are trying our best to avoid an accident. Please cooperate,” a guard told a young woman who was trying to stream the events through Facebook Live. Others clicked photographs on their cellphones.

The firefighters, equipped with gas masks and portable fire extinguishers, doused the flames in a couple of hours.

“There was dense smoke on the third floor when we reached. The building’s in-built fire safety mechanism had cut power supply and we sprayed water using the building’s own hydrants along with fire extinguishers. We had to break several glass panes on the façade to let the smoke out,” an officer said.

The office where the fire started out had been vacant for the past few months but had furniture and cubicles made of plywood and several computers stacked inside, the officer said.

“It seems that the fire broke out because of an electrical short-circuit but it can be confirmed only after a thorough probe,” the officer said.