Nikhil Bhardwaj
Tribune News Service
Ludhiana, June 18
Though the fire brigade has started getting the fire tenders and other required stuff gradually under the Smart City Mission, their major issue of staff crunch still remains unresolved.
The authorities concerned are not paying attention towards the issue which can seriously affect the disaster response mechanism in case any major fire incident takes place in city.
Only 5 fire stations for 17 lakh people
Despite the city has over 17 lakh population, the industrial hub is only having only five fire stations catering to the population. Fire stations have around 21 fire tenders and this number is not according to the norms of population. As per the norms, one fire tender is required after every 50,000 population and according to city’s population, which is over 17 lakhs, 34 fire tenders are required.
Recently, the Fire Department has been given four small quick response vehicles and three live detectors (victim locators). The quick response vehicles will enter the narrow lanes of old city areas where big fire tenders cannot reach, especially in those areas where many hosiery units are located. These live detectors will help the fire officials in sensing if any human being is trapped inside the building at the time of fire incident.
A fireman, on the condition of anonymity, claimed that they got four quick response vehicles so as to reach in time for controlling the situation but staff is equally important. He said there is hardly any planning to recruit more regular staff. He claimed that due to the lockdown not many fire incidents are taking place but during normal days it is difficult to handle the peak season when they have to work for more than 12 hours and they are also not getting any overtime for the same.
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