Fire consumes restaurant in Mussoorie

MUSSOORIE, 29 Dec: “Water water everywhere, but not a drop to fight fire.” This would be most aptly said for an incident of fire that occurred at Gun hill near Kulri Bazaar, here, in which a restaurant was gutted in a fire caused by a cylinder blast at around 2.30 a.m. 
According to an eyewitness, Pitambar Nautiyal, owner of a photography shop in the vicinity, he heard a loud bang at night and thinking that some terrorist had struck, ran out to see what had occurred. To his dismay he found that a restaurant called Super Café was burning fiercely. Pitamber immediately woke up his staff and tried to put out the fire with whatever water was available, but to no avail. As the fire spread, someone called the fire brigade for help, which arrived almost immediately. However, the tender could not be deployed as the shop is located in Gun Hill area, which is the highest point in the Mussoorie Palika and the path is narrow. Fire officials then tried to find a hydrant from which they could pump water, but there was none. A small tap was found from which only a little water trickled out, thus making the task much more difficult for fire fighters. 
The fire could be put out only after tedious effort of one hour. By then, the entire restaurant was gutted in the fire damaging all the equipments and goods inside. According to Fire Officer Shiv Shakti, Gun Hill has a reservoir that provides drinking water to the town of Mussoorie, but no water was available to fight the fire. He added that the outlets were too small for fighting such a fire. The cause of fire, according to him, could be a short circuit, after which the fire reached the commercial LPG cylinders, resulting in the loud blast. Two cylinders were recovered safely. Source:http://www.garhwalpost.com/centrenewsdetail.aspx?id=9624;&nt=Uttarakhand