About 100 shanties were gutted and a fireman injured in a massive fire at Govandi's Gautam Nagar in the wee hours of Friday. The fire started out of an illegal footwear manufacturing unit, that held three domestic gas cylinders, and spread to the shanties. The illegal unit had no licenses and had been penalised by the ward office last year. Station officer Sampat Bamble suffered around 20% burns while firefighting and is being treated at National Burns Centre, Airoli. Another injured was let go after being treated at Rajawadi."

Parts of Govandi, Deonar are home to hundreds of informal manufacturing units producing footwear, clothes, bags, food products etc. These units generally operate through houses or shops and have local labour employed. One such unit belonging to Raj Alam Shaikh Wazid Hussain was located in Gautam Nagar. It used to operate out of a shop and had no mandatory licenses. It also stored gas cylinders, chemicals illegally.