The gold ornaments that were charred in the fire that engulfed a house in Davorlim. Santosh Mirajkar.
High voltage reduces house to ashes; affects 910 others
Davorlim residents blame lethargic attitude of power staff
THE GOAN NETWORK
MARGAO
A residential house was completely gutted in a major fire, while consumer durables belonging to adjoining houses were damaged. The suspected cause of the fire is high electrical voltage at Davorlim village around noon on Friday.
Besides the residential house owned by Raju Shirodkar and his family, around 9Â10 neighbouring
houses sustained heavy losses as their refrigerators, TVs, lamps and bulbs were damaged as the
area around Tolleabandh touched a electrical high around noon.
Property worth lakhs of rupees were destroy in the fire as the house was reduced to ashes within
minutes. Gold ornaments belonging to the Shirodkar family were destroyed in the fire as the
ornaments were recovered later in molten form.
Raju Shirodkar blamed the power department for not acting promptly on the complaint lodged by
his neighbour after the voltage burnt down household items in around 9Â10 houses.
“My family has lost everything in the fire. We have only the clothes which we are wearing. All the
household items, including TV sets and refrigerator are destroyed,” he said.
The women folk of the locality including Monica Salgaokar and Anuja Redkar blamed the power
department personnel for neglecting the area. “When people from the locality go to lodge their
complaints, the personnel there make fun of us. They are not serious in attending to the grievances of the people,” they said.
Anuja Redkar said the TV set and two refrigerator were damaged in her house in the incident following the high voltage incident. “When my husband went to the power department at around 12.45 pm, they said that the staff had gone for lunch. Prompt action by the department would have averted the fire incident in the Shirodkar house,” Anuja said.
Power officials said the high voltage was restricted only to the households which are connected to
the electric pole in the locality. “We will investigate the matter to find out how the area was hit by
high voltage,” junior engineer Sharad told The Goan.
