GUWAHATI: Some residents in pockets of Aryanagar and Sreenagar areas of Guwahati on Thursday, September 19 picked up where they left off the day before as they rummaged through the debris in the hope of finding valuables that the fires might just have missed or, at least, left in a salvageable state.
“ I have lost everything,” said a resident whose house was among several in a cluster that a fire razed to the ground in Aryanagar on Wednesday morning; his eyes, still keen, were taking in the black and gray charred remains.
Across the city, the Aryanagar resident’s lament found echo at Sreenagar where too a fire destroyed a cluster of houses on Wednesday.
“I thought I might be able to retrieve something, but, no, there’s nothing,” a resident said. “We have to rebuild from scratch,” he said resigned to fate.
The fires in both places were exacerbated by exploding LPG cylinders.
It was a fiery Wednesday for Guwhati, the tone of which was set before dawn when a fire left a fruit shop at Adabari gutted.
Then happened Aryanagar followed by Sreenagar before the day was capped by a fire that left a vehicle carrying oxygen and LPG cylinders mangled at Sawkuchi near Lokhra.
At the end of the day, the losses in the fires were estimated at over Rs 56 lakh, but the counting continues.
At Aryanagar, the loss was estimated at ₹25 lakh while the one at Sreenagar cost around ₹20lakh; loss from the burnt vehicle was pegged at about ₹11 lakh.
The spate of incidents within such a short time frame has left the city on edge, with authorities urging residents to take extra precautions.