Six houses, two commercial buildings gutted In J&K's Bhaderwah 

Bhaderwah Nov 16: Six multi storied residential wooden roof houses and two commercial buildings were gutted in a massive fire incident in green colony area of Chinnote Panchayat in Jammu and Kashmir’s Bhaderwah on Thursday morning.

Locals of the area alleged that fire could not be controlled for 4 hours due to the inefficiency of local fire tenders resulting in loss of property worth crores.

According to reports, fire erupted from Food Lab restaurant at 4am and soon spread into adjoining buildings having wooden roofs after an LPG cylinder exploded.

The fire spread rapidly as the roofs of these structures are made of dry cedar wood which is said to be highly inflammable.

"Fire tenders are located just one kilometer from incident site and although 2 fire tenders reached the spot after half an hour but they were neither having water nor do they have petrol for the pumps to lift water from adjoining Nullah. This resulted in fire spreading to adjoining buildings," Said Khalid Bashir Mughal, Sarpanch Chinnote.

SSP Doda Abdul Qayoom who was on the spot supervising the fire extinguishing operation said, "as soon we came to know about the fire, police immediately reached the spot to assist the fire and emergency department to douse the flames. Meanwhile we also called fire tenders from Bhalla and Doda as the flames were spreading very rapidly."

"8 structures including two commercial buildings have been gutted so far but luckily there is no injury or loss of life. As of now fire has been controlled from spreading but fire tenders are still on the job to completely douse the flames," SSP added.

Meanwhile, DC Doda Harinder Singh who also visited the spot, assured enquiry into the matter.

Residential houses and commercial structures which got burnt in the fire belong to Kuldeep Duttas(Food Lab restaurant), Sajid Zargar, Shafkat zargar, Mohd latief Zargar, Mohd Iqbal Zargar and Abdul Rehman Zargar.