PANAJI: The upper floor of a two-story wine shop located next to the General Post Office in Panaji went up in flames on Friday but further damage was averted as fire tenders which immediately rushed to the site managed to fight the blaze.
Goods worth of lakhs of rupees were gutted in the fire, police said, but no one was hurt in the incident. Thick smoke began bellowing out from the upper floor of the wine store, housed in a ground-plus-one Portuguese-style structure around 2 pm. Spotting the columns of smoke, passers-by called the emergency services who rushed three fire-tenders to the site and managed to prevent the blaze from spreading to the lower floor and other adjacent shops.
The fire department has estimated the loss to be in the region of Rs 15 lakh. It claimed around Rs 1 crore worth of goods stocked on the ground floor and other adjacent buildings were saved.
Assistant divisional Manager Ajith Kamath and Station officer Dilip Gawas of department of fire and emergency services personally supervised the fire-fighting operation.
This is the fourth major incident of fire in the State in the last couple of days. Earlier, a store and hotel were gutted in a fire at Anjuna and a house was gutted in Ponda.
