Fireman killed in Mumbai high rise blaze

Mumbai, July 18 (IANS) A fireman was killed and five others injured Friday when the top two floors of a 22-storeyed building that houses the office of film star Hrithik Roshan went up in flames here.

The fireman, identified as Nitin Inglekar, was trapped along with 10 other colleagues in the thick smoke swirling on top of the Lotus Park building in suburban Andheri west and succumbed to it, an official of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation Disaster Control said.

There was no escape route for the firemen trapped on the terrace as strong winds hampered fire-fighting operations.

Later in the afternoon, the civic authorities deployed a Coast Guard helicopter to rescue the trapped people.

They were rushed to the R.N. Cooper Hospital for treatment. The condition of three of them is reported to be serious.

Inglekar belonged to the Borivali Unit of the Mumbai Fire Brigade and was among the first group which responded to the fire call.

The blaze was first noticed on the 21st floor and the flames quickly spread to the 22nd floor of the building, officials said.

The fire -- the cause of which is not known -- broke out at 10 a.m. when a majority of the office complexes in the building had not yet opened for the day's work.

As many as 40 fire tenders battled the flames even as a few people present on the lower floors were evacuated as a precautionary measure.