GREATER NOIDA: A small fire in a kitchen from a short circuit that could have been doused in minutes spread to other rooms in a Greater Noida housing society on Friday and took almost an hour to be brought under control as the fire-fighting mechanism of the building failed.The residents of flat number A-203 of Ajnara Homes alleged that neither did the water sprinklers installed on the ceiling work nor there was any fire extinguisher in the corridor. Security guards at the society had to manually carry each cylinder by hand from the ground floor to douse the flames in the second-floor flat. The maintenance agency claimed all fire-fighting equipment had been upgraded.Sources said the fire broke out around 1pm because of a short circuit in a plug hole in the kitchen. The three-bedroom flat has been rented out to Surya Bhan Singh, who lives with his wife and daughter (2). Singh works as a network engineer with Ericsson Global India.Singh told TOI his wife had seen some sparks in the switchboard where the chimney wires had been plugged. “I was sleeping when I heard my wife shout. I ran to the kitchen and found that the wires were up in flames and they were spreading across to the wooden shelf. I ran out of the house with my family and pressed the fire alarm on the corridor. There was no sound, so I called up the guard room. I tried to look for fire extinguishers in the corridor, but there were none,” Singh said.After about 15 minutes, a guard ran up the stairs while another pressed the alarm installed in the guard room. “By then there was smoke all around. They brought six extinguishers one by one but could not handle the flames. Eventually, they used a fire hydrant to bring down the flames after about an hour,” Singh said.Several residents flocked to the facility manager’s office and raised objections about the fire-fighting infrastructure. “All of us are terrified. If they can’t handle such a small fire, what will they do if there is an emergency? We also raised the issue of voltage fluctuation,” said Sujoy, a resident at Ajnara Homes.Mohammad Faruque Khan, who heads the agency responsible for maintenance, denied that the fire-fighting system was lacking. “I inspected the spot myself. It was a small incident of fire, which was taken care of by the team of guards in little time. The fire-fighting system here is up to date,” Khan added.Approximately 550 families live in the 11 towers of Ajnara Society. Tower A, where the fire broke out, has 60 families living in it. The residents also alleged that the switchboards cannot handle frequent voltage fluctuations because they are of local brands.

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