Lucknow, Aug 29 (IANS) A massive blaze at a cold storage in Uttar Pradesh's Varanasi district destroyed equipment and stocks of spices and dry fruits worth over Rs.20 crore, police said Monday. No casualty has been reported.
The fire engulfed the Vishwamitra cold storage facility in Sarnath area late Sunday, following which 20 fire tenders were pressed into service.
"It was a massive fire. Firefighters took some hours to douse the flames completely," police Inspector Krishna Kumar Pandey told reporters in Varanasi, some 300 km from Lucknow.
Initially, the fire broke out in a portion of the cold storage late Saturday following an electric short-circuit, but the flames were not completely put out, Pandey said.
"It appears that with gusts of wind, the flames spread to other areas late Sunday.
"While the exact financial loss is yet to be ascertained, at the moment it is pegged at around Rs.20 crore," he said.