Ghaziabad: Twelve people, including four minors and a senior citizen, remained stranded on the terrace of a residential building in Shalimar Garden Extension-1 for nearly an hour on Saturday evening after a major fire broke out in their flats on the third and fourth floors following a short circuit. The two families were rescued after a team of firefighters doused the flames and cleared the smoke.The fire broke out at the residence of Ram Krishan Patel on the third floor of Disha Home apartment around 7.20 pm and spread vertically to the fourth floor, damaging a second flat belonging to Ravi Goswami. Both families ran to the terrace as smoke filled the passages.Sahibabad fire station officer-in-charge said flames had engulfed the third and fourth floors by the time their team arrived, prompting the deployment of four additional engines from fire stations in Loni, Vaishali, and Kotwali.“Due to heavy smoke filling the staircases and passages, breathing apparatuses were used to clear the way and reach those trapped,” chief fire officer Rahul Pal said. “We first doused the flames on the stairs, then covered the survivors with wet clothes and brought them down.”Twenty-five people, attending a marriage anniversary party in a flat on the third floor, next to the Goswamis’ home, managed to reach the stairs just in time and safely evacuated the building, officials said. No casualties were reported.On May 5, nine members of a family, including two senior citizens, were trapped on the third floor of a three-storey residential building in Indirapuram’s Niti Khand-2 after a gas cylinder explosion on the ground floor triggered a major fire. Firefighters had to break through an iron grille and a setback wall separating the terrace from an adjacent building to rescue the family.
