At least 300 vehicles were gutted after a fire broke out at the Wazirabad Police Training Centre 'malkhana' (yard) in northeast Delhi, the Delhi Fire Services (DFS) officials said on Thursday.
No one was injured in the incident, they confirmed. A senior police officer said that about 125 four-wheelers and 175 two-wheelers were gutted.
"We received a call regarding a blaze at 2.37 pm. A total of 14 fire engines were pressed into service. No one sustained injuries in the incident. Our team is still working at the site," Divisional Officer DFS, Ashok Kumar Jaiswal said.
The officer said there were more than 4,000 seized vehicles parked at the yard. "The area is spread in more than five acres and the fire was in a pile of vehicles of more than 300. Our teams immediately started dousing the flames. Some senior police officers also reached the spot for investigation regarding the blaze," Jaiswal said.
He said there can be two possible reasons for the fire at the site.
"One that someone may have thrown butts of cigarette/'bidi' due to which dry leaves and bushes caught fire or spontaneous combustion could also be the reason behind the fire in which spark from batteries of the vehicle might lead to the incident," Jaiswal said.
According to the officer, 40 firefighters reached the site to douse the flames. "Seat covers and paint of the vehicle catch fire more aggressively," he said. The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained and police are probing all angles.
Sources in the police said that the exact number of damaged vehicles would be checked from the list and records of district and police stations concerned. "Forensic experts and crime team visited the spot to start further investigation into the matter," the source said.
A thick black smoke was visible from far away. On Wedesday, 16 cars were gutted when a fire broke out at a civic authority-run parking lot in east Delhi's Madhu Vihar area, where more than 100 cars were parked in the facility. Fire-related calls surged to 180 on Wednesday recording a nearly three-fold rise over the single-day calls received by the Delhi Fire Service, with officials attributing the increase to heatwave conditions prevailing in the national capital.
The Delhi Fire Services (DFS) received 220 calls, including 183 fire-related, on Wednesday, the highest so far this year, officials said. The remaining calls were related to bird and animal rescue.
From January 1 to May 26, the department received 8,912 fire-related calls, according to the data shared by the DFS on Monday.
