KOLKATA: At 3 am on Monday, Moushumi Halder’s phone rang. It was her husband, Pankaj, calling from the warehouse where he worked, 8 km away. It was a goodbye.
“He told me a fire had broken out and he wouldn’t survive. He was pleading for help,” Moushumi said, her voice breaking. “Then the line snapped. I called back and he said he only had five minutes left, and I would never see him again.”
That was the last time she heard from him. By the time the family reached the Nazirabad area in South 24 Parganas, the entire warehouse was in flames.
The massive fire gutted two warehouses and an adjacent three-storey building, reducing the structures that had been warehouses for a fast-food chain and a decorator to twisted iron skeletons and ash. At least three persons were killed and several others remain missing as search operations continue into Tuesday evening.
The Halder family waited outside the warehouse in Nazirabad, South 24 Parganas, through Monday as firefighters struggled to put out the fire. They returned on Tuesday and headed to the Narendrapur police station, where families of the people missing in the fire had gathered.
Among them was Gurupada Sau, who travelled from West Midnapore in search of news about his brother, Biswajit. “He has a wife and five young daughters…. I have been waiting here since then, hoping to get some news about my brother,” said Gurupada, adding that a minister had also come in between the long wait to take down the names of those missing.
The scene at ground zero remained grim on Tuesday. The air was thick with the acrid smell of burnt rubber and plywood. Inside the 30-foot-high structure, the charred remains of a motorcycle and stacks of supplies were visible beneath a caved-in tin roof.
Priyanka Santra, whose brother, Anup Pradhan, is missing, said they last spoke on Saturday night. “On Monday, when we heard the news, we desperately tried to contact him. His mobile phone was switched off. My father and my brother’s father-in-law rushed to the spot. They told us over the phone that they had found nothing except ashes. There were no bodies. Everything was burnt to ashes,” said Santra.
A Baruipur police district officer said remnants of some human bodies had been found. “There were at least three skulls. The rest were all mangled remains, which were charred beyond recognition. Some were just bones,” the officer said, adding that forensic analysis would be conducted to ascertain the number of deaths.
