High-rise buildings in Ludhiana out of Fire Department's reach

Tribune News Service

Nikhil Bhardwaj

Ludhiana, May 26

Tackling any fire incident in high-rise buildings in city is a Herculean task for the Fire Department due to the unavailability of hydraulic ladders with the fire brigade. The city has many such buildings and most of them have made their own fire arrangements to some extent but these may fall short in case of any major fire.

As per information, the department does not have hydraulic ladders to locate and reach the source of the blaze in the high-rise buildings.

Still at the time of fire in multi-storey buildings, the onus to douse the flame rest on the fire fighters. Either they have to enter in the building to douse the flames or they have to climb the nearby buildings to start the dousing operation. Either of the way, the firefighters are putting their lives in danger.

The recent fire in the two-storey building of auto spare parts in Subhani Building is the latest example when fire fighters had to climb onto the adjoining buildings hence they put their lives at risk to douse the flame. If the Fire Department had the hydraulic ladder then, they would have easily doused the flame from outside without endangering their own lives. “When the fire had broken out in Gola factory in the year 2017, since fire brigade had no hydraulic ladder they had to enter in the multi-storey factory to douse the flame and unfortunately factory had collapsed and killed 16 people including nine firemen.

Fire officials requesting anonymity said they have been raising the demand for hydraulic ladder from years and every time officials assure that they will take up the matter with the authorities at Chandigarh but nothing happens on ground.

According to sources, recently the proposal to purchase the hydraulic ladder was approved at the Chandigarh-level by the senior officials of the Local Bodies Department and funds from the Smart City Missions are to be used for the same. Officials said it is likely that tenders to purchase hydraulic ladder can be floated any time by the department.

Municipal Commissioner Shena Aggarwal when asked about the plans to procure hydraulic ladder, she told The Tribune that, “The process is on. We would shortly be procuring all the machinery for fire brigade”.

350 fire incidents reported

This year 350 incidents of fire reported in the industrial hub from January 1,2022 to till date, the industrial hub has already witnessed more than 350 fire incidents, of these some of the incidents are major ones where firefighters had to put their lives at risk to control the flame.

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