South Kolkata blaze guts 40 shops, raises fresh questions over fire safety

A devastating fire swept through South Kolkata’s Ramgarh Market in the early hours of Friday, reducing nearly 40 shops to ashes and once again bringing the city’s fire-safety preparedness under sharp scrutiny.

According to local residents, flames were first spotted around 1.30 am in a cluster of shops inside the congested marketplace, located in the Garia police station area. The fire spread rapidly through the tightly packed stalls before firefighters arrived.
Seven fire tenders had to fight a two-hour battle before the blaze could be brought under control. The cause of the fire is yet to be determined, officials said, adding that a forensic examination will be conducted. Fortunately, no injuries were reported, but losses were estimated to near Rs 1 crore.

Advertisement

The incident comes close on the heels of several major fires across Kolkata in recent months, exposing chronic lapses in monitoring, storage practices and enforcement of safety norms.

Only a few weeks ago, a massive blaze broke out at Gulshan Colony in Anandapur, where a chemical warehouse located on the ground floor of a multi-storied building had caught fire. The presence of large quantities of inflammable material made firefighting extremely difficult. Thick black smoke engulfed the area, causing panic among residents and traders in the vicinity.
Barely a year had passed when Ezra Street, one of the city’s busiest commercial hubs, was again hit by a catastrophic fire that reduced a wholesale market of electronic goods to cinders. Twenty fire tenders battled throughout the early morning to douse the blaze. That incident followed a similar fire on 23 October 2024, when a wooden-crate factory on the same street had gone up in flames. Fire tenders had managed to contain the blaze after several hours, but concerns over the area’s vulnerability remained unaddressed.
Despite repeated review meetings at Nabanna and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), and the formation of a state-level committee to curb fire accidents, the frequency of such incidents continues to rise.
Experts argue that unauthorised storage of hazardous materials, unregulated electrical connections, and congestion and inaccessibility in commercial pockets are turning neighborhoods into tinderboxes. Questions are now being raised over the effectiveness of surveillance, routine inspections and coordination between the fire department, police and civic authorities.
With Friday’s Ramgarh Market blaze adding to the list, residents and traders are once again asking why only dousing activities happen, while preventive measures remain inadequate. The city, they say, can no longer afford to treat recurring fires as isolated events.
End