10 fire engines take 3 hours to douse blaze that hits 67-year-old unit of Bengal's legacy med co
2
Kolkata: A fire broke out at a Dey's Medical factory on Bondel Road around 4 pm on Saturday, sending thick black smoke billowing across the neighbourhood and forcing residents of nearby buildings to evacuate.
While nobody was injured in the fire, three firemen fell ill after inhaling toxic fumes while working inside the affected building.
The factory was closed at the time but the blaze at its pharmaceutical unit sparked widespread panic, with residents rushing out of their homes and traffic coming to a standstill in the area. Ten fire engines took nearly three hours to control the blaze. The billowing smoke was so dense that it was visible from as far as Park Circus, a few motorists said.
The exact cause of the fire was yet to be ascertained.
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"The fire broke out in the pharmaceutical unit of the factory. Barring the guards, there was nobody inside the factory as Saturday is a holiday. As no work was on, a short circuit could have caused the fire, but the reason can be confirmed only after a forensic inspection," said a fire department officer, supervising the rescue operation. "The pocket where the fire started had some packaging chemicals.
It spread fast," said one of the firefighters on the scene.
Sources said the Dey family, which owned the business, had recently invested Rs 40 crore to upgrade the manufacturing facility to conform to the World Health Organization's Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). "The manufacturing facility was upgraded in the past one-and-a-half years. We are praying and hoping the fire did not cause much damage to the facility as 70% of our drugs are manufactured at this unit," said company director Rishav Dey.
The factory will resume operations only after the investigation is completed.
"At first, we thought it was just someone burning waste, but the smoke quickly turned dense and dark," said Namita Chowdhury, a resident of 43, Bondel Road, located right opposite the factory. "There was a lot of shouting and confusion. People were coming out on balconies and calling their neighbours." Chowdhury said six members of the family, including two children, were inside the house when the incident took place.
No one was injured, though all suffered a bout of coughing amid the smoke.
The blaze caused major traffic disruptions on Syed Amir Ali Avenue, Rifle Range Road, Palm Avenue and the Bondel Gate flyover, as fire engines and emergency personnel cordoned off the area. Picnic Garden resident Fahim Ansari, who was stuck in the jam on Rifle Range Road, described the moment he realised something was seriously wrong. "As I rode towards the Bondel Gate flyover, the entire area looked like it was under a dark cloud.
The Dey's Medical factory on Bondel Road was inaugurated in 1958 by then former chief minister Bidhan Chandra Roy. Though Dey's Medical has multiple manufacturing facilities now, the Bondel Gate factory is the only one, where pharmaceutical products, including tablets, syrups and eye drops, are manufactured. The other unit makes cosmetic products, including body and hair oil. There are also some factories outside the state to which it contracts medicine manufacturing.
Dey's Medical founder Bhupendranath Dey forayed into the pharmaceutical business in 1941, when he rented a space on Lindsay Street opposite New Market to establish Dey's Medical Stores.
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