A fire on the second floor of a three-storey building at Camac Street’s intersection with Park Street on Tuesday morning derailed south Calcutta traffic and revived memories of the Stephen Court fire that claimed more than 40 lives 14 summers ago.

There were no casualties on Tuesday, police said

No one was trapped or injured, an officer said.

Thick black smoke billowed out of an enclosure on the second floor that appeared closed from all sides. Hundreds of people got down on the roads to catch a glimpse of the flames while many more panicked in the adjoining highrise buildings.

Fourteen fire tenders struggled to contain the blaze.

The first and ground floors house bar-cum-restaurants. While the ground floor was unscathed, a part of the first floor was affected.

The establishment on the ground floor is named “1000 BC — Once upon a plate”. The one on the first floor is called “The Drunch — All day cafe”.

The police identified the establishment on the second floor as “Whats in D Name”. It was not operational, an officer of Shakespeare Sarani police station said.

A man who identified himself as the owner of the first floor of the building told reporters on Tuesday that the fire broke out while some renovation work was in progress.

Several people who work in offices close to the building said they were aware of the ongoing renovation and suspected that some welding work going on inside the closed structure might have caused the fire.

“We all know that some renovation work was going on,” said the sales manager of a store near the building.

Police or senior officials of the state fire and emergency services department said they had no such information.

The structure on the top floor — which resembles a cargo container and was visibly sealed from all sides — raised questions about whether it was authorised.

According to Kolkata Municipal Corporation officials, Rajdeep Chakraborty, son of Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation mayor Krishna Chakraborty, had applied for a trade licence for running a bar-cum-restaurant on the second floor three or four years ago. But KMC had declined him one saying it does not issue trade licences for an establishment running from the terrace.

The official, however, could not confirm whether Chakraborty got a trade licence later or not.

Krishna Chakraborty told Metro that her son was the owner of the restaurant-cum-bar. “It shut down four months back. My son sold it to another person two months ago,” she said.

It was “resto-pub”, she said.

She could not say for how long the “resto-pub” ran from the Park Street address. “These are things that my son would be able to say,” she said. Rajdeep Chakraborty told this newspaper that he had sold the brand and the place was non-operational for the last four months.

“We had taken the property on rent in 2015. We ran the bar-cum restaurant ‘Whats in D Name’ till a few months ago, when we decided to sell the company. The place has been non-operational since February 1 and we have accepted ₹30 lakh from the individual who is buying the company,” Rajdeep said over the phone from London.

He said his company had all the required licences, which were not renewed this year because of the decision to sell the place.

Haridas Naskar, who works in a gym in the adjoining Celica Park compound, said: “We spotted the fire around 11am. The top floor of the adjoining building was in flames. We tried our best to douse the fire from our side. We poured water from our seventh-floor balcony. The fire tenders arrived quickly.”

The police said an investigation is on.

A senior officer of the fire and emergency services department said they would find out whether the structure had valid permits.

“The cooling process is in progress now. After that, a team from the forensic science laboratory will visit the place to ascertain the cause of the fire,” said the officer.

The department, he said, has yet to lodge a complaint.

State fire minister Sujit Bose, who went to the spot on Tuesday morning, said the fire department personnel and the police have done a “splendid job” as no one was trapped or injured.

Asked about the probe, he said: “We will see to that later.”