Report on a Fire Accident

Lead with casualties, place and time in a single sentence, then how the fire started, how long it took to control and how many units attended, the damage, and what the fire service said about the cause. Speculation about arson or negligence has no place in a news report unless it is attributed.

The question: Write a report on a devastating fire accident.

The format

Casualties, place, time — and say if there were none

The first sentence carries what burned, where, when and whether anyone was hurt. If there were no casualties, say so at once: it is the first thing a reader wants to know.

• Give the number of shops or floors.
• Give the hour the fire started.
• 🚨 Do not open with the scale of destruction alone.

How it spread and how it was controlled

Second paragraph: where it began, what fed it, how many units attended, how long control took, and what hindered them.

• Narrow lanes and water distance are the usual obstacles.
• Attribute the timeline to the fire service.

Loss as an estimate, cause as preliminary

Traders on the loss, the fire service on the cause — and always as preliminary, with an investigation committee formed. A cause stated as fact is both a register error and a factual risk.

• Give the loss as an approximate figure.
• ⚠️ Never state arson or negligence unattributed.

Model answer

Model answer (about 200 words)

Fire guts 60 shops at Chattogram market

Staff Correspondent

Chattogram, 5 September: A fire destroyed about sixty shops at a wholesale market in the Riazuddin Bazar area early on Thursday, though no casualties were reported, the fire service said.

The fire broke out at around 3:15 am on the ground floor of the market and spread quickly through shops stocked with cloth and plastic goods. Eight units of the fire service brought it under control after about two and a half hours. Firefighters said narrow lanes around the market had delayed their vehicles and that water had to be drawn from a distance.

Traders who reached the site at dawn said most had lost their entire stock ahead of the coming season. Preliminary estimates put the loss at several crore taka, though the fire service said a proper assessment would take time.

A fire service official said the cause appeared to be an electrical short circuit, but that a formal investigation committee had been formed. The market had been identified as fire-risky in an earlier survey, and traders said fire extinguishers on the premises had not been serviced for some time.

What earns and loses marks

• Say how long it took to control and how many units attended. Those two facts appear in every real fire report and are the ones invented reports most often omit.
• Put the numbers in the first sentence. A news report leads with how many, where and when; anything else in the opening line is an essay opening in disguise.
• 🚨 Keep yourself out of it. “We should all be careful on the roads” is a sentence from a composition and loses the register mark immediately.
• Attribute every claim you could not have witnessed. Unattributed figures are the clearest sign of an invented report.
• About 180 to 220 words in four short paragraphs is the right length; newspaper paragraphs are short by convention.