Meenakshi temple fire: Shopkeepers blame officials for calamity

In a petition submitted to Collector K Veera Raghav Rao, they said when the fire broke out all the shops were locked.  

Despite that, they rushed to the spot and on learning that the blaze started from electric cables, they rushed to the EB office though there was no one there at that time. So the power supply could not be shut down immediately, they claimed. When they dialed 101 to call fire tenders to the spot only one fire tender reached the temple only after 40 minutes. 

The fire tender had only one-fourth of its full capacity water and it was emptied in just three minutes. They had been demanding that the temple officials station a fire tender in Aadi streets for more than three years though their demands did not make any headway. 

Similarly, no security guards were present at the time of the fire, they said. When such deficiency of service lay with the temple authorities, how could they ask the shopkeepers to vacate the temple premises, they wondered.