Playing with fire, risking lives Premium
The Hindu
Last week’s devastating blaze at a multi-storey building — the third such major incident in less than a year — has brought back focus on a fire safety system that is in tatters for more reasons than one. While structural irregularities and absence of/ non-functioning firefighting equipment are commonly noted, obvious gaps in rule enforcement and lack of regular audits are adding fuel to fire, quite literally.
Accidental fires have become commonplace in the city, often fatal, as witnessed from three massive fire mishaps in less than a year’s time.
Twelve persons, all hapless migrant labourers, met with their horrific death when fire broke out in a scrap godown at Bhoiguda area of Secunderabad in March last year.
Even before the incident could fade from public memory, eight more persons choked to death in another fire that broke out in the basement of a building in Secunderabad. The most recent instance of fire in a building on Minister Road, where even the skeletal remains of two victims could not be traced, has raised serious concerns about fire safety in the city.
If nothing else, the three incidents should be a lesson for the civic authorities that snoozing is no longer an option amid the multi-directional and vertiginous explosion of the metropolis.
At a time when every concrete structure enclosing electric circuits, and inflammable material should be essentially looked upon as a potential fire hazard, there is utter disregard for even minimal fire safety precautions such as availability of water connection to firefighting appliances.
Instances of illegal structures, residential buildings used as storage for inflammable material, commercial establishments being run illegally in residential buildings, and multi-storey commercial complexes without firefighting appliances, are a dime a dozen in every nook of the city. The irregularities come into focus only when mishaps such as these take place.
A common thread running through all the aforementioned incidents is the structural illegalities found in the buildings where fire broke out. All the three structures had illegal appendages, and two of them circumvented fire safety norms mandatory for the buildings that size. Despite the glaring violations, civic authorities had not taken any action till it was too late.