TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
MARGAO: An explosion attributed to LPG cylinder leakage rocked a residential building at Ambaji-Fatorda, leaving a father-son duo injured on early Wednesday morning.
While the father Vinod Amonkar, who sustained critical burn injuries, was shifted to the Goa Medical College and Hospital, Bambolim, his son Vallabh is convalescing at Hospicio Hospital.
The incident occurred at around 9 am when a huge explosion rocked the Palmar Residency at Ambaji. Residents who came rushing out of their apartments only to find Amonkar flat under fire. As they found the burning father-son duo rushing out, they put off the fire with the help of blankets, before they were rushed to the hospital by a 108 ambulance, informed a resident of the building, Manikrao Raikar. “We rushed out after the society was rocked by a huge explosion. When we came out we saw the Amonkar flat under fire and the window panels lying on the ground,” Raikar recalled.
Fire Officer Gill Souza attributed the suspected cause of fire to LPG gas leakage. “The probable cause, it appears, is gas leakage from the cylinder,” he said and put the total loss of property on account of the fire to Rs two lakh.
He said the impact of the blast was so intense that it ripped through the main door, reducing the wooden door into pieces.
Vallabh told the Fire Officer at the Hospicio that he and his father had returned to the flat only this morning. He could not state whether they had sensed any gas leakage, but admitted that his father had gone inside the room to light a candle. “I was having a bath. My father had gone in the room to light the candle,” he told Gill Souza.
