Gorakhpur Fire and Emergency Safety Guide

On the morning of 10 October 2026, a gas leak caught fire in a house in Rapti Nagar Phase-1 while a gas agency hawker was checking the cylinder, and four people were burnt. Ranjan Das, 75, died the next day and his wife Jaya Das, 70, was reported to have died on 15 October; no official cause had been reported by 16 October, and we cover it in a case study.

On 4 October 2024, the Gorakhpur ADM said the Rapti was flowing 90 cm above the danger level, with 29 villages affected and 85 boats provided. In early August 2025, 83 families of Bagha Dewar in Barhalganj tehsil were asked to move to a relief camp at Patna Ghat as the Rapti, Ghaghra, Gandak and Rohni rose, though the Rapti at Bardaghat was still 3.70 metres below its danger level.

In late September 2026, continuous rain from a depression flooded large parts of the city, and the District Magistrate said four people died in separate tree-fall incidents, three of them in a hut in Campierganj. Residents said the water stayed for four to five hours and blamed the Municipal Corporation's drains, while MP Ravi Kishan called it the heaviest rain in 15 to 19 years.

On the evening of 10 March 2026, a fire broke out in a wholesale cloth shop and godown in Ghantaghar Market, Raiganj, with the owner's family living on the floors above; firefighters did a rescue and no death or injury was reported. On 12 June 2025, a fire at the JSR Garden commercial complex gutted five shops, and six fire tenders brought it under control within an hour.

The BRD Medical College principal said in April 2023 that 238 patients were admitted with acute encephalitis syndrome in 2022 and 28 died, and that the encephalitis ward had grown from 217 to 428 beds. FactChecker found that cases and deaths had fallen since 2017 but not to zero; these are the latest figures we could confirm.