Over 50 scrap government ambulances were gutted in a fire that broke out on Monday at the outskirts of Hyderabad under the jurisdiction of Jeedimetla police station limits. The vehicles were parked at the GVK Emergency Management and Research Institute in Medchal.   

"On Monday afternoon around 1 pm, we received information about fire in GVK EMRI parking place. When we reached, we found several government ambulances on fire in the parking. Fire tenders were called in and after some time we doused the flame. Around fifty ambulances were gutted in the fire," Subhash Reddy, specialist firearms officer (SFO), Jeedimetla was quoted as saying.

“The fire which erupted from one of the ambulances immediately spread to the other vehicles parked beside it one after the other. The institute staff and authorities who noticed the fire alerted the fire department. More details will be revealed in further investigation,” police told reporters.  

While it is yet to be established as to what caused the fire, officials suspect that it could have been a short circuit or a rise in temperature, which led to dry grass nearby catching fire. 

“For the last ten years, the 108 ambulances, which have been non-functional, due to some technical issues, were parked in the scrapped yard. Out of these as many as 60 108 ambulances were gutted. We are suspecting the fire broke out after dry grass caught fire from the heat,” State head of operations from GVK, Mr. Brahmanandam told DC.

No casualties were reported in the incident and officials said that they had launched an investigation to ascertain the cause of the fire.

Having launched the 108 emergency response service on August 15, 2005, in Hyderabad, at present, the emergency service is operated on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) basis between the GVK-EMRI and the Telangana state government.