The audience thought the smoke was part of the special effects
Most of the victims in Friday's fire at a Delhi cinema house suffocated to death.
Delhi police and fire brigade sources said most of the victims
died of asphyxiation when they were trapped in thick smoke and intense
heat generated by the burning of about 50 cars parked right below
the Uphaar cinema hall where a transformer burst, causing the fire.
The death toll was confirmed on Saturday morning at 60, with 41 bodies
lying at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and 19 at the
Safdarjung hospital. Eleven people are battling for life at the AIIMS
intensive care unit.
The police arrested four Uphaar cinema managers -- R K Sharma, A S Chowdhry, K L Malhotra and N S Chopra -- on charges of negligence on Saturday morning.
The police have secured remand for the managers as part of the inquiry
being conducted by the deputy police commissioner (south), Additional
Police Commissioner Maxwell Pereira said.
The fire brigade is conducting a parallel inquiry.
Both inquiries will cover possible criminal negligence on
the part of the civic authorities and the theatre management in
ensuring safety norms in the building that housed the cinema hall.
Uphaar, which is located in the posh Green Park area of south
Delhi, can seat 1,200 people.
Fire brigade personnel said about 50 fire tenders fought the flames for about an hour before it was put out. They admitted they took about half an hour to reach the theatre
because of dense peak hour traffic.
The injured said they began to feel suffocated around 1645 hours when smoke started entering the cinema hall through the ventilators. This was followed
by unbearable heat. Uphaar is located on the first floor of the five storeyed complex, just above the parking area.
Tragedy struck when the transformer in the parking lot burst, setting afire the
vehicles parked there.
Most of those killed were watching Border from the balcony
area; spectators in the lower stalls managed to flee.
One of the survivors said the audience initially thought the smoke collecting inside
the hall was part of the special effects in the movie which was then showing a
war scene. The film is based on what happened at Longewala in the 1971 Indo-Pak
war.
Uphaar had only recently been renovated and its sound
system modernised. There was no damage to the screen
or to the seats, but the parking lot was completely gutted.
Before fire brigade personnel arrived on the scene, local
residents, shopkeepers and those shopping in the major markets in
the Green Park and Yousuf Sarai areas broke all the theatre's glass doors
and windows, and rescued many of those trapped inside.
Some people jumped from the balcony into the hall below, not finding any
escape route in the balcony area. One rescuer said a woman carrying a child jumped from the lobby window into the street. He said he caught her baby, saving the child from injury. At least three people jumped from the second floor staircase window into the street below to escape the fire.
Eyewitnesses said the police reached the cinema hall within ten
minutes and joined the rescue operation. Police officers said at least 48 police control room vehicles were summoned from all over the capital as no ambulance was
available to carry the dead and injured to the hospitals.
Most of those killed in the fire were declared dead on arrival by
the doctors. Almost all the bodies bore no signs of burns or other injuries,
confirming that the victims had died of suffocation.
The bodies lay on the floor in the AIIMS casualty ward where people
poured in crying. Police jeeps were being used late in the night to take the
bodies home after their relatives had identified them.
Raman Sidhu, director at a foreign bank,
sat shell-shocked in a corner of the AIIMS hospital. He lost
six members of his family and three friends in the fire.
Among the dead were his wife and two children, his sister and
her two children, his best friend, his wife and child.
The tragedy left many devastated as a family outing
turned into a disaster.
Among the dead were Captain M S Bhinder -- who won two show jumping
gold medals at the National Games last week -- his wife and four-year-old
son. Captain Bhinder was second-in-command of the 61st cavalry and
secretary of the Polo Club.
The Uphaar cinema tragedy has amplified the concern of fire
brigade authorities that 50 per cent of fires occur due to
faulty short circuits and wirings.
Fire sources said there were 398 deaths in 1,500 incidents in the capital during 1996-97. Half of the fires were due to electrical faults and substandard equipment.
Property worth Rs 500 million were destroyed in Delhi.
Other reasons for fires were improper use of basements in a majority of buildings besides improper installation of diesel generation sets and careless handling of inflamable
objects.
EARLIER STORY:60 feared killed in Delhi fire
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Few people in Delhi, it seems, want to see a film anymore
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