When you visit a restaurant next time and the waiter asks, "What will you have?", you must pose a counter question. Where's the fire exit of the building? Similarly, when the bellboy takes you to the your hotel room and shows you the AC switch and the TV remote, don't forget to ask him where the nearest exit point is. Remember, fire services will arrive only after an incident. It's your duty to ensure that you know how to exit a building you are in.
In my 21 years of service in the Delhi Fire Services, I have noticed the maximum number of deaths near exit points. The exit door is often found locked, mainly for security reasons. During a fire, people often manage to reach the exit door, but can't unlock it.
In the recent Kamala Mills fire in Mumbai, 14 people died. The increase of population density in cities is turning out to be a big challenge from fire safety point of view. But if you compare the buildings of Delhi and Mumbai, the building rules in Delhi are more stringent, thereby making them far more safer. The Delhi buildings that were constructed in the last two decades are building code-compliant, and most of them have fire safety standards comparable to those in developed nations.
A fire-compliant building does not necessarily mean there won't be a fire accident in that building. Fire is caused by a different set of factors, including short circuits and growing fire loads. What a code-compliant, and most of them have fire safety standards comparable to those in developed nations.
A fire-compliant building does not necessarily mean there won't be a fire accident in that building. Fire is caused by a different set of factors, including short circuits and growing fire loads. What a code-complaint building does is to minimise the losses in case of an accident.
Till 1983, fire safety was not factored in while constructing a building in India. After the 1983 Gopala Towers fire (a 14-storey building at Rajendra Place in Delhi), building bylaws were notified under which fire safety arrangements became mandatory in Delhi for buildings with a height of 15 m and more. At that time there were 220 such buildings in Delhi, constructed mostly between 1970 and 1983. The first major law on fire safety — the Delhi Fire Safety and Fire Prevention Act — was enacted in 1986. Then there were new building bylaws in 2009, which were revised in 2016. The new code complaint buildings must have more open spaces; there has to be a better smoke management and sprinkler system; and the law also mentions the kind of construction materials to be used.
In the first three decades of post-Independence, Delhi had buildings with ground plus one or two floors. Now, we have buildings of 150 metres of height. So, the challenges for fire services have been changing over time. It increased after 1991 when India opened up its economy, and more investments started pouring in.
Delhi is still better off in fire-compliance because of stringent rules and strict enforcement. For example, we refused to grant no objection certificate to Hotel Hans Plaza in the late 1990s, as it had just one staircase. The case finally went to the high court, which first asked for an additional staircase. When the engineers and architects said it woni¦t be possible to add a new staircase, a sprinkler system was put in place as an alternative. In some of the tall buildings in Delhi, steel staircases were added to be used during fire emergency.
I have been associated with firefighting since 1978. I feel satisfied that I belonged to the first batch of engineers from the National Fire Service College, Nagpur, where I later taught. Till 1996, when I joined the Delhi Fire Service as a divisional officer, I was more a fire theorist. But in the last two decades, I have attended no less than a thousand fire calls. And I find nothing wrong in fire theories except that we must apply the right theory at the right time.
When I joined the service, we were always very defensive. Till some years ago, we used two or three jets on the fire grounds so that we could continue firefighting for longer hours with less quantity of water. But now we are much more aggressive. Today, we have 250 vehicles with 12 lakh litres of water on wheels. This means, we can mobilise that much water to the fire ground upon receiving a wireless message. Also, we now discharge more water— 170 litres per minute— with an effective striking power. We now use six-seven jets, thereby reducing the firefighting time. Today, we extinguish a serious fire in six to seven hours, down from 16 to 18 hours some years ago.
The most critical issue in firefighting is the ever-growing response time. The standard response time, as accepted internationally, is three to five minutes. But the worsening traffic conditions in Indian cities have slowed down the speed of our vehicles. The average speed of fire tenders in Delhi is 10-15 km per hour. So, the 3-to-5-minute response time is a distant dream in an Indian city. The reality is, we can attend only 40% calls in 10 minutes, another 30% in 15 minutes, but in certain cases, our response time is as big as 25 minutes.
In developed nations, there are emergency lanes; we doni¦t have it here. During the Commonwealth Games in 2010, dedicated lanes were created for moving players from one venue to another. We also use those lanes, and our response time has reduced to a minute a kilometre.
Citizens must remember that the job of a fire service is only to react. The effort must be in not having the fire incident in the first place. In our own flats, for example, we keep on piling up electricity loads without upgrading the aged circuit. This leads to short circuit. Second, many builders adhere to fire safety rules only to receive the no objection certificate. Once it is received, we store old furniture on exit staircases. Third, we keep the terrace locked, mainly due to security reasons. Fourth, we tend to hide firefighting equipment and give undue prominence to decorations. And, finally, we keep on storing books, clothes, old furniture and what not, without realising that we are actually increasing the fire load in our apartment.
(As told to Shantanu Nandan Sharma by G C Mishra, director at Delhi ..
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