South Delhi Hotel Fire Aftermath Hauz Rani Hotels Shut Guests Stranded

On Thursday morning, an eerie silence engulfed a narrow lane in South Delhi’s Hauz Rani, which was cordoned off by police tape while shops on either side had their shutters down. Several police officers were stationed in the middle of the street. A small crowd of onlookers gathered at the far end of the lane behind the police tape, trying to catch a glimpse of a blackened building, where the only signs of life was a dog that lay curled up on a wheelchair ramp. This was the spot where a deadly fire tore through Flourish Stays B&B a day earlier, killing 21 guests, including 12 foreign nationals. In the aftermath of the tragedy, more than 20 neighbouring hotels and bed and breakfast facilities have shut their doors, amid fears of a crackdown by authorities. Guests, many of them medical tourists seeking treatment at the nearby Max Hospital, have been left stranded. Wasif Ahmed, 19, who runs a pet shop in the same building as OYO City Palace, a few metres from the gutted Flourish B&B, said the owner of the hotel shut operations and left shortly after the fire. “The owner, panic-stricken, shut down the hotel and left yesterday after the fire,’ Ahmed said. “They don’t have the required permits. In fact, none of the hotels in the area have them,” he claimed. The surrounding galis, usually empty, were filled with vehicles trying to get to the main road, diverted due to the sealed-off route. A woman from a country in Africa, in her early 30s, paced through Malviya Nagar, desperately seeking help to move her belongings from a room in a hotel located behind the site of the fire. With the only access route sealed off and cycle-rickshaw pullers reluctant to help in the aftermath of the blaze, she said she had been left stranded. Asked about the tragedy, she responded angrily: “So what? People die every day. That doesn’t mean we stop working. We’ve all lost someone in our lives…”