We are done: Dying words of assistant engineer killed in Srisailam fire

Hyderabad: A video recorded by assistant engineer Sunder moments before he died in the fire at TSGenco's Srisailam power plant on 21 August has surfaced.

In the video, a panicked Sunder can be seen breathing heavily as loud alarm bells ring in the background. Sunder tells his colleague, “If we stay here we will be dead”. The colleague can be heard saying, “What to do? Let’s wait and think what can be done.” To this Sunder replies, “If we stay here any longer, the situation will get worse.”

After that Sunder says, “It’s difficult, it’s difficult, it’s difficult and we are done.” The video ends with the phone ringing and the loud emergency alarms echoing in the background.

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The fire that broke out at the Srisailam hydel power plant in Nagarkurnool on the night of 20 August, leaving nine people dead. By the time the chief engineer (hydel) of the Telangana State Power Generation Corporation Limited, B. Suresh, reached the plant, it was already too late.

“People had a chance to escape but they were trying to save the equipment and the plant. Once we came out, Srinivas ran to the control room. They tried, till the last minute, to save the plant,” Mr. Suresh said. However, he lost his best staffers in the fire.

Earlier today The chairman and managing director of Telangana State Power Generation Corporation Limited (TSGenco), D. Prabhakar Rao, had expressed his grief over the loss of nine lives in the Srisailam fire accident.

Terming the deaths as tragic, Mr. Rao said that they tried their best to rescue those who were stuck inside the plant. “Within hours of the incident, I reached the site with G. Jagadish Reddy, the minister of energy, and carried out rescue operations throughout the night. Our department was not able to solve the crisis alone, and so we called members from the National Disaster Response Force and Central Industrial Security Force,” he said.

Expressing his condolences, he said that ex gratia sum for families of the deceased has been declared. “The Chief Minister has already instructed the CID to do their job and submit a report. We have also set up an internal committee. They are not allowed to go inside yet,” he added.