Goods worth millions of rupees were reduced to ashes as a fire spread through dozens of shops at a Landa Bazaar on Ferozepur Road near the Ghazi Road stop in Lahore on Monday.
Rescue 1122 officials said the first call was made to them at 6:19 pm and fire fighting vehicles reached the scene within 10 minutes.
They put out the blaze at around 9 pm.
Shopkeepers said that the bazaar consisted of more than 60 stalls in a three-kanal area. The DCO said that around 35 had been burnt to the ground, while Rescue 1122 officials said 28.
Police evacuated nearby houses and shops, including LPG cylinder shops, while the fire fighters managed to stop the flames from spreading to them.
Ambulances and fire-fighting vehicles of the city district government, Rescue 1122 and Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation, the charity wing of Jamatud Dawa, participated in the rescue operations.
No casualty was reported. A Rescue 1122 spokesman said that 18 fire-fighting vehicles had been pressed into service.
Several shopkeepers fainted from the grief of watching their businesses destroyed and were taken to General Hospital.
They had tried to save the goods kept at their stalls, but the fire spread rapidly. They sold second-hand clothes, shoes, bags and belts.
Abdul Ghafoor, the general secretary of the Ferozepur Road traders’ union, said that the DCO had assured them that shopkeepers who had lost property in the fire would be compensated by the city district government.
The losses would be assessed in the morning and then a report would be presented to the district government.
However, DCO Nasim Sadiq said that the bazaar fell in a Cantonment area and so any compensation may not be for the city district government to decide. He said that the shopkeepers might be compensated for their losses, but no such arrangements had been made as yet.
The exact cause of the fire was unclear. The DCO said that shopkeepers had blamed “negligent neighbours” in nearby houses, but he did not elaborate. An inquiry would determine the cause of the fire, he added.
Contingents of anti-riot police were also called to the scene, but the shopkeepers remained calm on the whole, a police official said.
