Fire guts Verasu building; no injuries

Police said the fire started at about 8am on the fifth floor where the kitchenware and baking equipment company was storing paper and cardboard boxes. Firemen took about two hours to control the inferno. Huge flames were seen from the outside. Some of the company’s staff work on Sunday. The first four floors were kitchenware shops and restaurants while the sixth and seventh floors were offices. Some of the staff working on the sixth and seventh floors had to run up to the roof as the fire and thick smoke prevented them from going downstairs. Officials had to use a crane to bring them down to the ground.

Ploenchai Tanlueng, 28, said he was tending a vegetable garden on the roof when some employees alerted him to the fire. However, they failed to escape to the sixth floor because of the thick smoke, before being rescued.

Penwit Katejinda, 23, an employee of a second-floor coffee shop, said the lights flickered for about five minutes before her co-workers from the upper floors rushed down, saying a fire had broken out. After that everyone escaped outside.

Police said the cause of the fire may have been an electrical short circuit. The building was constructed in 1998 and had no fire alarm system.