The blueprints and drawings of several of Mumbai’s ambitious rail projects were literally a few feet away from the balls of fire that engulfed the fifth floor of Central Railway’s new administrative building on Friday evening. These important project details and maps are stored inside the offices on the sixth floor right above the Container Corporation of India (CONCOR) office, where the fire started.

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The fire that started inside the server room of CONCOR, quickly spread to adjacent rooms after officials failed to contain it with the extinguishers at hand. It burnt several plastic cabinets, wooden cubicles, desks, and thousands of paper files. As people fled for their lives the flames began to swell and rose upwards.

A floor above is where CR’s construction department is situated, where experts plan, draw and implement vital railway projects. Officials said that on Friday plans and details of several upcoming projects such as the Belapur-Seawood-Uran suburban line, the subway at Kurla LTT, the elevator and FOB at Dadar and plans of 15 other proposed elevators, road overbridges and additional railway lines, were lying with a few feet of where the fire reached, before it was brought under control.

“Luckily firemen managed to prevent the blaze from spreading so none of the documents and files were damaged,” said a CR official. On Saturday morning, the staff of Central Railways was seen bringing down several burnt files and furniture and dumping it on the footpath. The cleaning process was also going on with water being sprayed and ashes cleaned.