Pune: A major fire gutted one of the three laboratories at a biotech company in Theur, about 28km from here, on Friday.“It took over six hours to douse the blaze. About 40 firemen from the Pune fire brigade, seven fire tenders and water tankers were pressed into service for fire-fighting. No one sustained injuries in the fire,” Prashant Ranpise, chief fire officer of the Pune fire brigade, told TOI.Ranpise said prima facie, short-circuit could have led to the fire. “We had deployed two fire tenders at the spot,” he added.Ganesh Pinguwale, sub-inspector of the Lonikand police, said the company, Rise n’ Shine Biotech Private Ltd, deals in biotechnology, floriculture and horticulture. “The company has three laboratories where technicians work in three shifts. Around 8.30am on Friday, the technicians in the laboratory number 2 alerted the supervisor about a fire in one of the units,” the officer said.He said before the supervisor could reach the laboratory number 2, all the 50 persons working there had come out. “Within seconds, fire broke out in the laboratory,” Pinguwale said, adding, “The supervisor and others tried to douse the fire by using fire extinguishers, but it had spread in the entire laboratory by then.”The fire brigade was immediately alerted. “As many as seven fire tenders and tankers from the Pune fire brigade reached the spot and began dousing the fire. To restrict the blaze from spreading to other two laboratories, we broke the median wall with an earth-moving machine and made way for the fire tenders,” Pinguwale said.Fire officer Shivaji Chavan, who led the fire-fighting operation, said around 3 in the afternoon, the firemen doused the fire. “It took few hours more for the cooling,” he said.Pinguwale said the exact loss of the property is yet to be ascertained. “We will carry out panchanama in a day or two,” he added.

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