A fire broke out at a fish market in Odisha’s Cuttack district, destroying more than 30 shops and damaging a bank branch in the same building. Fire service officials said the fire, which broke out around 2 am on Monday in the Press Chak area of Cuttack, quickly spread across the busy market area after a paint warehouse inside the decades-old building caught fire due to an electrical short.
Dealers claimed that the cash value ranged between $50 thousand and $The fire killed 60,000 people. Several bundles of banknotes owned by merchants, stored for payments and business operations, were completely burned.
The fire initially engulfed the fish market on the ground floor and then spread to the upper floors, including the Bank of India branch, raising concerns about damage to documents, furniture, records and other assets. The bank branch was damaged, although the exact extent of the loss has not yet been assessed.
According to initial estimates, about 17 fish traders who were operating in the market suffered huge losses, as deep freezers, fish stocks and equipment turned into ash. Some traders said they held on to cash because banks remained closed and payments to suppliers were due the next day.
“One trader lost almost alone $14 lakh in his store. Ledger books are worth $“Around 30-40,000 pending transactions were also destroyed,” one trader said, adding that many had spent more than three decades building their businesses in the market.
At least 10 to 12 fire engines and more than 25 fire service personnel were deployed, but narrow lanes and crowded location hampered access to the building. Thick smoke continued to rise from the building for hours, making it difficult for firefighters to enter the place and contain the fire.
Officials said flammable materials such as paints and colors stored inside the building accelerated the spread of the fire. To reach the damaged parts, emergency teams used machines to break parts of the structure.
