PLAYING WITH FIRE

24th May 2019, a coaching centre in a cramped area, the fire took down 22 teenagers more than a year to this incident and the scenario doesn’t seem to change. According to reports, 43 people have been killed in over 3,722 incidents of fire in 2018 alone. 

On December 8, 2019, as many as 43 people were killed in a gruesome fire accident in Delhi. 

The February month of 2019 saw a massive fire on the fifth floor of the Arpit Palace, Karol Bhag, New Delhi and took 17 lives. 

A fire triggered by a leaking chemical barrel led to massive explosions in a chemical unit in Sirpur, Mumbai, August 13,2019. 

1.12 lakh people have died in India between the years 2010-2014, reason fire outbreak (which could have been easily prevented).

According to India Risk Survey 2017, fire has entered the top 5 risks for the first time over the past three years, owing to the significant number of reported incidents causing losses to material and physical assets. Yes! this is not just flouting the fire safety norms, it is something beyond negligence where we put the price of a citizen’s life in equivalence to a rice grain.

So how are people responsible for accountability getting away with this? 

A few loopholes in the NBC, to put it in layman’s terms: it’s an only agency which installs the fire system or equipment and later it is hired for checking or auditing the same installation. This raises eyebrows over the credibility and quality of the installation as well as the audit.

• Based on a 2011 study, 65 percent deficiency was reported in fire stations.

• According to Ministry of Home Affairs, in 144 towns with population over 1 lakh, there is a huge deficiency of fire fighting infrastructure.

• 78 percent of the budget allocated to buying fire safety equipment and rescue vehicles went unused across the state between 2010 and 2015.

Probable solutions: Fire prevention and fire protection is a state subject. Only municipalities and local bodies are held accountable in face of a crisis in this case, which leaves plenty of room for cover-up practices, to fill this void we can bring the centre as a supervisory body over the state which is the case regarding all other crisis management situations, or if not the centre, provide an independent third party committee which can supervise and hire different agencies for installation and audit as well keep the state’s resources in check.

The owners of factories and other huge industries prone to such attacks should first get the fire safety training certificate in addition with the safe against fire certificate which will require them to provide their workers with a safety training program before even the factory starts production.

Last but not the least coming to the citizens, every educational institute ranging from kindergarten to post graduation should provide students with mock drills taking in consideration all kinds of disasters including fire. As of today only international board schools have been implementing these drills but we need all the educational institutions irrespective of the age of students, boards of schools, government or private to conduct it, because we have made the world to unsafe for children to walk freely.

We need to start from level zero!

                                                                                          Nishita Patil