Firefighting in high-rise buildings an uphill task

Bijendra Ahlawat

Faridabad, which aspires to be a smart city, has no robust firefighting infrastructure in some areas. The Fire Department of the city has no hydraulic platform to douse fires in high-rise buildings. 

AK Gaur, a resident of Omaxe Heights in Sector 86, was shocked when the Municipal Corporation Faridabad (MCF), in response to an application filed by him under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, stated that the Fire Department had no equipment or machinery to douse fire in buildings having 12 or more floors. He was also told that no fire station had been built in Greater Faridabad till date and in the event of a fire break out (in areas across the Agra and Gurugram canals), fire engines would have to be rushed from the fire station of Sector 15 A and the main fire station located near the MCF office in the NIT area. While it is claimed that the official response time to a fire incident is two minutes, the actual time depends on the road condition, traffic and the distance of the spot from the fire station.

Gaur had sought information on various points, including whether the Fire Department was well equipped to tackle fire incidents in high-rise buildings, especially in Greater Faridabad which has 28 housing societies having up to 21 floors. Interestingly, the Haryana Human Rights Commission in its order of May 2016 had directed the Director, Urban Local Bodies and Fire Service, Haryana, to shift one of the four hydraulic platform machines from Gurugram to Faridabad. The department was asked to file a compliance report within four weeks. The order was passed in response to a petition filed by Umesh Kumar Prabhakar, a resident of Sector 17. He had complained that in the absence of hydraulic machines, the lives of thousands of people residing in high-rise buildings in Faridabad are threatened. Gaur claims that even after two and a half years, the department concerned has neither procured new machines nor shifted equipment from Gurugram, thus violating the orders of the Human Rights Commission. 

Pramod Manocha, president of the Greater Faridabad Residents Welfare Association, says that the lives of over 50,000 residents of 28 societies in Greater Faridabad are at severe risk. The failure of the department to open a fire station in the area speaks volumes of the so-called development made on the smart city project. Almost all housing societies have 10 to 15 towers having 10 to 21 floors. Though these residential societies have their own small firefighting arrangements, any major fire can be devastating, he adds. 

The fire safety standards can also be gauged from the fact that the Fire Department has renewed only 350 NOCs this year against about 12,000 registered units in the city. There are only seven functional fire engines with the department at present, says sources in the MCF.