Major fire averted at Noida’s Prateek Wisteria

A major fire incident was averted at Prateek Wisteria, a high-rise in Noida’s Sector-77, on Wednesday morning.

Kitchen chimney, installed in third-floor flat of tower-F had caught fire at around 10 am. On spotting it, the maintenance staff of the society immediately rushed to the site with fire extinguishers and had the blaze under control.

Nisha Rai, secretary of apartment owners’ association (AOA) of Prateek Wisteria, said that as soon as the security guards came to know of the smoke coming out of the F-tower, they immediately rushed to the site and brought it under control within a few minutes.

She also informed that fire extinguishers were in good working condition because of which guards were able to normalise the situation immediately.

Meanwhile, a few residents said that such incidents happen because the owners do not take the requisite maintenance of their electrical appliances.

“A kitchen chimney needs to be cleaned every 10 to 15 days and when this is not done, fire incidents can happen,” said Yudhvir Singh, a resident of the society.

He added that that it is a duty of flat occupants to properly maintain kitchen appliances. “The chimney that caught fire was probably not cleaned for some time."    

Rai added that it wasn't the first time that a fire breakout was reported from kitchen chimney. It had happened in the past as well.

However, the incident started a blame game among the residents of the society as the maintenance responsibilities were recently handed over by the builder of the society to AOA.

Residents, who were members of previous AOA, pointed out that automatic fire alarm didn't start ringing when the smoke started spreading in the society.

Amit Gupta, previous secretary of the AOA, said that in case of an emergency, fire brigade engine can not reach inner circle of any park facing towers. “I had even lodged a complaint about this with fire department. But still the handover was taken without getting this huge problem sorted out.”