The sheds were reduced to ashes in the sprawling complex of the company and the debris had to be cleared to get a clear picture of the actual number of casualties, an official said.
Fire officials said that due to a variety of chemicals used in pyrotechnics crackers, there was thick and suffocating smoke, making their task difficult to enter the factory. The smoke could be seen 1.5 km away from the spot.
“These are times ahead of Deepavali. So activities go on at breakneck speed in the cracker units,” Virudhunagar District Superintendent of Police Najmul Hoda said.
A factory official said 300 persons were at work at the unit at the time of the incident.
Thousands of people thronged the area near the factory to inquire about the fate of their relatives working in the unit.
In October 2009, 32 people, most of them Deepavali shoppers, were killed at a cracker godown fire in Pallipattu in Tiruvallur district.
Officials said all the victims who perished in the fire had suffered more than 80 per cent burns.
The task was now to protect sheds where crackers had been stored in nearby areas, they said.
An angry mob in the area tried to enter the factory premises but were prevented by the police who sealed the area.
Senior minister O Panneerselvam and four other colleagues have rushed to the spot to oversee relief operations.
Officials attributed the delay in dousing fire to the lack of enough equipment for fire fighters, including mask.
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