Five teams of firemen had fought the flames at 14-storey Punarvasu Tower in Tarangan Complex in Thane for nearly two hours of Sunday before they began missing some of their colleagues.

Someone turned off the power supply, a lift jammed and six men of the Thane Fire Department choked to death when smoke from a fire on the upper floors billowed into the lift shaft, yet no one from the other teams realised anything was amiss.

D B Mope, station officer at the Wagle Estate fire station, said the first call came at 11.28 pm, saying a fire had broken out at Arvind Kulkarni’s home at Punarvasu Tower. The station sent its entire seven-member crew, Gripin Singh, Avadhoot Thanekar, Tanaji Kale, Santosh Shinde, Kishor Patil, Suresh Jamadar and M U Mulla. They returned at 1.05 am, having advised Kulkarni to spend the night elsewhere as some stray sparks could have revived the fire. Deputy station officer Mulla had inhaled some smoke and was hospitalised.

The next call came at 4.30 am and the same team, minus Mulla, reached the building. “Since they had attended the first call, they were confident and took the bold decision to take the lift. For some reason yet to be clear, the lift did not open on the 14th floor and they appeared to have died of asphyxiation,” said Mope.

As the fire raged, residents made more frantic calls to the fire brigade without knowing that the first team from Wagle was trapped inside the lift.

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