RANGPUR/Joypurhat: Over 200 rooms in the pucca, semi-pucca and thatched houses of 57 families with huge properties were gutted by a devastating fire at village Telipara under Sadar upazila in Nilphamari in the small hours of yesterday, report agencies. According to official sources and local public representatives, erupting from the kitchen of one Abdul Wahed, the fire soon engulfed the adjoining houses amid blowing winds gutting the houses belonging to 57 families of the village.
Being informed, the Fire Service and Civil Defence personnel from Nilphamari and Syedpur EPZ Stations in Nilphamari district rushed to the spot and distinguished the fire in three and a half hours time with assistance of the local villagers.
Chairman of local Choraikhola union parishad Mossarraf Hossain Manik told local reporters that the fire gutted more than 200 rooms with huge properties, including cash money, rice, paddy, potato, clothes, furniture and cattle-heads of 57 families.
Four cows, three goats and more than 200 poultry birds like chickens and ducks were also gutted in the fire incident, he added.
Nilphamari Sadar Upazila Nirbahi Officer Md Sabet Ali along with Sadar Upazila Project Implementation Officer Abul Assad Mian and local public representatives visited the village yesterday morning and talked to the victim families.
The upazila administration has been preparing list of the affected families and taking preparations for conducting relief and rehabilitation activities among the victim people in the village as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, a hardware shop and a warehouse adjacent to it were gutted by a fire that broke out at Maroari Para in the district town on Wednesday night.
Jahanur Islam, inspector of Joypurhat Fire Service Station, said the fire originating from an electric short circuit erupted at the hardware shop of one Mahfuzul Haq and soon engulfed the shop and its adjoining warehouse around 12:30am.