A fire destroyed at least seven shacks and fast food stalls on a pavement stretch adjacent to the main gate of TCS Gitanjali Park in New Town late on Sunday.

The stalls on the pavement were shut when the fire broke out. Three fire tenders from the New Town fire station took about an hour to douse the flames.

There were no casualties and no one was injured in the fire, police said.

But the incident again brought to the fore the dangers posed by stalls that have mushroomed along most of New Town’s pavements.

An official in the state fire and emergency services department said they
heard at least two explosions at short intervals on Sunday night.

“We had just started spraying water from fire hoses when two explosions were heard. The flames rose at least 20 feet,” said the official.

After the fire was doused, the firemen found remnants of at least three LPG
cylinders in the stalls, along with the charred remains
of four refrigerators. The fire department has started an investigation to find out
the cause of the blaze, the official said.

“A lit cigarette might have started the fire. Fire tenders were sent to the spot in less than 15 minutes after getting an alert,” fire and emergency services minister Sujit Bose said.

Gourav Naskar, who worked in one of the gutted stalls, said all seven burned shacks sold tea, snacks and fast food.

A cluster of hangar-like structures built by the NKDA 1 for vendors, just 10m away from the spot where the stalls were gutted.

“We had left the cooking utensils, cylinders and our stock of biscuits, chips and snacks in the stalls and shut shop as usual on Sunday night. All of us rushed back after we were alerted of the fire, but we could not save anything,” Naskar said.

Metro on Monday drove through the township and spotted stalls made of bamboo, plastic and tin occupying pavements in front of almost every housing and office complex. Most of these stalls are eateries that store gas cylinders and cook in the open.

A stone’s throw from the area where the fire gutted the cluster of shacks, other stalls were seen cooking food on LPG-powered stoves. Several had multiple cylinders stored inside.

Around 10m away, a cluster of hangar-like structures built by the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) for street vendors remains under lock and key.

Stalls on a pavement in the same area

The NKDA has built such structures in several places across the township over the past decade to relocate hawkers from pavements and roads. The hangars together can accommodate more than 800 hawkers, an NKDA official said.

The NKDA is planning to set up 200 more rehabilitation stalls — at least two more hangars — near Gitanjali Park and create another set of stalls along the canal bank in Action Area II.

“We have repeatedly requested the hawkers who have been allotted stalls in the hangars to move there but they have listed multiple problems. Talks with them have failed on several occasions,” said an NKDA official.

Food stalls along a pavement in New Town

This is not the first time that a fire damaged stalls on a pavement in New Town.

In 2017, the then head of security at TCS Gitanjali died while fighting a fire that had broken out in a similar cluster of shacks when an LPG cylinder kept in one of the stalls exploded.

In 2019, a trader was killed after a fire broke out in a cluster of stalls in front of Sukhobrishti Housing Complex in New Town’s Action Area III.

Last year, a cluster of stalls made of bamboo and plastic sheets near the housing complex were damaged in a fire.