Fire at Mumbai's Anik depot destroys 10 new CNG midi buses

A fire at the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Anik depot in central Mumbai started at 5:45 p.m. on Monday and destroyed 10 new air-conditioned midi buses. A BEST spokesperson said the buses were CNG vehicles parked in a row in the yard, and that they had been procured from the Daga group for the undertaking's fleet. No injuries were reported. The cause has not been established.

A civic official said at least four fire engines, five water tankers and other firefighting vehicles were sent. The blaze was brought under control after more than an hour. Eyewitnesses told reporters they heard blasts and saw thick black smoke. They said the blasts were CNG tanks. Some trees in the depot were singed. Those blast claims are witness accounts, not a fire-brigade finding. BEST has said the cause is being ascertained.

The buses were midi buses, single-decker mini buses, and they were air-conditioned. Ten of them, new, in one yard, is a fleet loss rather than a passenger incident. Anik is a depot, not a road. The vehicles were parked. That is why the injury count can be zero while the asset count is not. A CNG bus carries its fuel in roof or chassis cylinders. A fire that reaches those cylinders is what witnesses describe as a blast. The brigade's job in that case is water and distance, which matches the tanker count.

BEST has been adding CNG and electric buses as the city pushes older diesel vehicles out. A loss of 10 new CNG midis at one depot does not ground the network. It removes a block of small buses that were meant for routes where a full-length bus is the wrong size. The Daga group is the private operator the spokesperson named as the source of this batch. The undertaking has not said whether the buses were insured, or whether replacements are already in the order book. Those two facts decide whether Monday is a write-off or a delay.

The hour-plus burn, with four engines and five tankers, is the operational size of the call. A depot yard fire spreads along a row of parked vehicles if the first bus is not isolated. Ten destroyed in a row is consistent with that spread. It is also consistent with a single point of origin that the inquiry has not named. Until the fire brigade files a cause, the public record is the clock, the count, and the absence of injuries.

Mumbai's bus depots sit inside residential and industrial belts. Anik is in central Mumbai. Smoke seen from a distance is why the call drew tankers as well as engines. The trees singed inside the yard mark how far the heat reached beyond the vehicles. No passenger was aboard. The loss is capital, and it is specific: 10 new air-conditioned CNG midi buses, bought for the fleet, gone in the yard they were parked in.

The open item is the cause. BEST has not said whether the inquiry is looking at a cylinder, an electrical fault, or something outside the buses. Eyewitness talk of tank blasts describes the middle of the fire, not the start. The brigade controlled it in more than an hour. The next public sentence should be the cause, and a figure for what the 10 buses cost.