Secunderabad Hotel Fire: Building Lacked NOC, Survivors Narrate Hellish Escape

Those who climbed down drain pipes and jumped off windows to escape the fire narrate their ordeal.

Around 10 pm on Monday, 12 September, K Keshavan, 27, woke up to someone pounding on his hotel room door. He was in room number 405 of Ruby Luxury Hotel, Secunderabad where a massive fire had broken out around 9.30 pm.

As he opened the door, he could see another panicked guest – the occupant of room number 406 – who asked him to break open the hotel room window.

"Till I heard the knock on the door, I was not aware that there was a fire raging nearby. But when I opened the door, I saw thick smoke in the hallway," Keshavan told The Quint. What happened next was a heroic decision that saved his life.

The fire accident has claimed the lives of eight persons, Hyderabad North Zone DCP Chandana Deepti told The Quint.

Fourth Floor Escape: 'Climbed Down the Drain Pipes'

Keshavan said that the two of them broke open his room window within two minutes. "Smoke was already entering my room and I was finding it difficult to breathe. But we could get down to a parapet through the window which we broke open," he said.

As he was on the fourth floor, climbing down was difficult. The two held on to their lives and climbed down a drain pipe. "I finally felt safe when my feet hit the floor. By then, fire and rescue personnel had turned up at the location. We were taken to a hospital," Keshavan said.

The same was the plight of six others who have now lodged a police complaint against the hotel authorities, who according to Hyderabad Police did not have permission to run an electronic vehicle charging unit in the basement.

The fire, according to the FIR, is believed to have originated in the basement either due to short-circuit at the charging unit that led to a blast in one of the bike batteries or due to a generator blast. However, the regional fire officer V Papaiah said that the fire most likely started from the electronic vehicle charging unit.

Manmohan Khanna, a hotel guest who escaped by climbing down from the fourth floor of the building, has given a statement to Market Police Station, Secunderabad, stating that he heard the "room boys and hotel staff screaming." As per the FIR, he had seen flames rising from the first floor. Khanna and three others climbed to the fifth floor terrace of the building.

"We climbed to the side of Yatri Hotel from the terrace. But the other people were unable to escape from flames and smoke," the FIR read.

'Smoke Barred Visibility, Most Suffocated'

According to a Hyderabad Police source, of the eight persons who succumbed to injuries, four have been identified as residents of Chennai, Mumbai, Calcutta, and Gurugram. One was from Visakhapatnam. All five were men.

Another person, a resident of Bengaluru, is admitted in a private hospital in Hyderabad and is believed to be in critical condition. Six other injured persons are admitted in three different hospitals in the city.

A policeman, Rakesh, told mediapersons gathered at the spot, "When I entered the building, the smoke was so thick that it was difficult to see the person standing just beside you. I could rescue four persons from the spot."

Secunderabad firefighters received the first call for rescue from the police at 9.35 pm. The firefighting vehicles and the police were at the spot around 9.45 pm. The effort to douse the flames were on for four hours, well into the wee hours of Tuesday, 13 September.

Keshavan told The Quint, "I did not know that there were electronic bikes parked in the cellar. I had stayed at the hotel a year ago when I was in Hyderabad for business. I opted for the same hotel when I came this time too."

'Building Lacked NOC From Fire Department'

Regional Fire Officer V Papaiah told The Quint that the owners of the commercial building had not obtained a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the fire safety department.

"The owners had trade permit to run the electronic vehicle showroom. But as per our norms, the owners should not have used the cellar space for display, charging, and sale of vehicles. So they were running the business in violation of fire safety norms," Papaiah said.

However, the building had some of the firefighting equipment mandated by the fire safety department. There were hose reels, smoke alarms, and sprinklers in the building.

Nevertheless, As per the fire officer, lithium used in electronic vehicle batteries had a catastrophic effect. "Lithium when on fire can produce poisonous smoke. The trapped guests inhaled this smoke," Papaiah said.

If the guests and the staff had escaped to the terrace of the building, lives could have been saved, the regional officer said. In the basement, where the fire broke out, water sprinklers had turned on. This created thick smoke.

Many hotel guests must have been caught unaware when the smoke suddenly rose, DCP Chandana Deepti told The Quint. "People may not have noticed the smoke at first. The fire could be contained, but those trapped had inhaled too much smoke," Deepti said.

"There was a staircase that connected the basement to all the other floors of the building. The smoke rose to the first and the second floor and from there to the other floors through the vacant staircase space," CV Anand, Commissioner of Police, Hyderabad, told reporters in the city.

The case is under investigation, he added. As per the fire safety norms, the building should also have had one lakh litre of water in the sump for dousing flames. An additional 10,000 litre of water should have been stored on the terrace.

However, a lack of ventilation turned out to be fatal for most guests in the building, regional fire officer Papaiah said. "Had there been enough vents for the smoke to escape, then fatalities could have been averted," he said.

There were 28 rooms for guests in the hotel of which 25 were occupied.