Shimla, November 2
Minto Court building has become yet another statistic in the long list of heritage buildings lost to fire in the Himachal capital. The 106-year-old building, which served as the headquarters of Border Roads Organisation’s Project Deepak, was destroyed in a devastating fire late Sunday night.

Of the 350 colonial structures in the hill town, the Tudor framed two-storey structure has joined more than 50 heritage buildings that have been destroyed in fire. Yet, the authorities seem to have learnt no lessons from the past tragedies.

Here’s how the authorities responded to the devastating Sunday blaze.

• The fast spreading fire was noticed by the BRO staff around 8.15 pm. The fire station at the Mall Road is about 3 km from Minto Court.
• The fire department received a call requesting help around 9.30 pm. 
  The first tender reached the spot around 10 pm, claimed Fire Officer Mahesh Sharma.
• The firemen didn’t have enough water and the water pressure was too low to extinguish the rising flames. The fire tender left for the Ridge to get a refill and returned after an hour.
• Around midnight, more fire tenders of the Army and Kandaghat fire station were requisitioned. By this time, the building was a mass of smouldering ash.

The loss: The entire record of Project Deepak might have been burnt down. “Barring some furniture and files there is little we could save. The possibility of having this record elsewhere is bleak,” said Brig SK Kataria, Chief Engineer at Project Deepak.

Brig Kataria said his staff informed him about the fire at 8.15 pm. “I thought the situation was under control as we had fire extinguishers. But when I reached the office at 8.45 pm, the fire had spread to the upper floor,” he said. The fire station was informed and Army’s help was sought thereafter.

He criticised the fire department for taking “more than an hour to refill a fire tender”.

“We got a call at 9.34 pm and dispatched fire tenders to the scene. We would have had a better chance of saving the building had we been informed as soon as the fire broke out,” claimed Fire Officer Sharma.

Smoke from the smouldering structure continued to rise even 20 hours after the fire. A short-circuit is believed to be the cause of the fire.

While questions are being raised on the slow response both on the part of the authorities, the loss has baffled many.