Dhenkanal: A youth’s fight with his family proved a disaster for entire village as the fire he set on his house gutted as many as 30 houses in Odisha’s Dhenkanal district on Wednesday.
According to sources, Sarat Nayak of Patharakhamba village under Kamakhyanagar police limits of the district had a quarrel with his family over some issues. In a fit of rage, he set fire to their thatched house.
After the roof of Sarat’s house covered with straw was gutted, the fire leaped to the neighbour’s house. Even as the villagers tried to douse the fire by splashing water from buckets, they could not control it.
As an LPG cylinder in one of the houses reportedly exploded during the inferno, the villagers panicked and all 30 houses situated adjacent to each other in a row turned to ashes.
On being informed, two teams of Fire Brigade from Parjang and Kamakhyanagar rushed to the villages and extinguished the fire. The properties of the affected villagers including jewellery, household articles and clothes worth lakhs of rupees were totally burnt.
Later, officials of local administration went to the village and assured the villagers of providing relief materials including food and polythene sheets urgently.
