Over 200 shanties in Indirapuram were destroyed by the fire, which began in a plastic plant. The three women who started the Pari Foundation dog rescue also lost it.
Ghaziabad: Vandana yelled at the dogs to run away as she ran from cage to cage, opening each one. She rushed them out of the building just in time for a fireball to land near the cover. The dogs ran away in fear as the fire quickly closed in around them. They were pushed, pulled, and desperately tried to be saved during the chaos that followed, but they were unable to get away.
The Indirapuram fire on Thursday killed about 50 animals, mostly dogs. It is thought that the fire that destroyed more than 200 shanties began in one of the plastic companies and spread to the settlement in Kanawani. People who were there said the fire spread because of a cylinder blast, and it took hours to put out.
Vandana Singh, one of the owners of Pari Foundation, the shelter home where 15 of the 65 dogs that died in the fire, said, “I feel helpless. I tried to save as many as I could and sent them to another shelter home.”
The shelter
Vandana Singh, Lakshmi Bhardwaj, and Purnima Baduni started the Pari Foundation. It is a simple building with a single floor made of brick walls and tin sheets.
A storm a few years ago damaged the tin shades. The three friends then used their savings to rebuild the building. Their job was to save the dogs and give them a place to stay.
Baduni said, “Once you start doing it for the dogs, you can’t stop.”
It was while feeding dogs in Vasundhara that the three women, who are now best friends, met. People in the neighbourhood didn’t like it when women fed dogs or let them stay in their homes. They chose to build a shelter because of this.
They took turns walking the dogs in the morning and evening. Singh was in charge of taking care of the dogs at the shelter, and Bhardwaj was to feed them. The job began at 11 pm and went until 4 am.
In the area, they feed about 700 dogs. In the summer, the dogs get bread and cheese in the morning and 30 kg of rice for dinner. This costs the three of them about Rs 85,000 a month.
“If you come here at 8:30 at night, it looks like a wedding ” Everyone waits and sits down. I told them that food was on the way, and they did.
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What did you do on Thursday?
Around 11 a.m., Singh was being mean to a dog when her cook yelled, “Didi aag lag gayi hai!” This caused chaos.
Singh stood in the ashes and on top of burnt dog beds and wooden furniture.
The first thing she did when she heard about the fire was let the dogs go. As soon as she opened the bars, the dogs started barking to try to figure out what was going on.
Although Singh and the cook pushed the dogs out of their cages against their will, the scared dogs ran into the shelter home to get out of the fire.
Singh said, “The dogs thought the shelter would be safe from the fire.” But by that time, the building was already on fire.
The fire burnt for hours and killed almost 15 dogs that lived in the shelter. About fifty dogs were saved by Singh and his cook.
What the accusations
As soon as the news got out, animal rights groups and dog fans blamed Singh and her team for not doing enough.
“People are asking, ‘Why didn’t you do that?'” Which is why you didn’t do that. They don’t see what we do every day. “That hurts,” Singh said.
An animal rescue worker from Delhi named Vikas Gautam told ThePrint that he didn’t see the point in building a dog home in a slum.
He said, “For making shelters, there should be proper provisions, and the shelter home did not have them.” This made him doubt the shelter home’s trustworthiness.
Gautam said that most of the animals that died in the fire were goats and cats.
“But dogs were hurt the most because many dog moms couldn’t get their babies out of the fire,” Gautam said.
“They were coming here and building homes; there were only a few here when we built the shelter home,” Baduni said. The women pay Rs 11,000 a month as rent for the foster home.
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Getting back to where you belong
They were all tired that night. The work did not stop, though. They looked for dogs that got away. The three of them were so tired that they went home, but the search continued in the morning.
At the same time, a group of helpers arrived with food and medical help. Singh discovered a white dog in the slum’s corner. The dog was found shaking after she brought it inside. The doctors gave her drips, which made her feel better.
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