fire safety

Who Will Bell the Cat? Are Government Offices, School-Buildings, Court-Rooms Following Safety Rules?

Nobody is questioning actions against those violating rules but in the name of crackdown the government should not use it to distract attention from the main issue of sudden flooding of the coaching hub of Delhi.

While administration in Delhi and several other cities across India are busy sealing coaching institutes for not adhering to the laid down rules and norms and running classes and libraries in the basements came the photograph of water leaking from the newly constructed parliament building. This June another photo went viral — it was of under-constructed Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.

Although the Opposition parties and even common folk are questioning the quality of construction materials used in these two structures, what many people are not asking is whether government buildings, schools, hospitals etc all over India are really following all these safety rules and regulations?

Besides, is is not a fact that there are lakhs of marketing complexes, restaurants, community centres, offices of media-houses, private homes, and even government constructed structures situated in basements? Not only that, many reputed hotels have underground kitchens. Will all these be sealed or even bulldozed as they are more hazardous than the coaching institutes where the water gushed in rather unexpectedly.

Climate change a favourite whipping boy

With the help of patronising media, it has become a habit of sort to blame nature, or climate change for all the mismanagement caused by the government. The haphazard and rampant construction in the urban centres and highlands of Himalaya and South India in the name of attracting tourists are wreaking havoc every year, yet we are on a construction spree. The sad fact is that now we are losing more than earning through tourism as man-made disasters are taking a heavy toll of lives and materials.

Nobody is lending ears to the repeated warning by the environmentalists and geologists. As a knee-jerk reaction some measures would be taken—as this time against coaching institutes and the car driver in Delhi. Instead of developing new drainage system and desilting the existing one in the cities we are building huge mansions, flyovers, underground subways etc. Heavy rain during the G-20 Summit in Delhi (September 9-10 last year) the newly built Bharat Mandapam also witnessed waterlogging.

Also read: Haryana: As Kanwariyas Held for Ransacking School Bus, Hindu Outfits Protest, Demand FIR Against Councillor

If building basement — otherwise a symbol of ‘development’ — is really a crime, why just target coaching institutes. Before anything more tragic happens, we should immediately ban all underground construction.

After all, the underground Palika Bazar which has around 380 shops was built by the New Delhi Municipal Corporation way back in 1970s. It was a prize attraction then as it was situated in the heart of Delhi.

It has earned a bad name when a female shopper was raped by two shopkeepers in 2007 and police issued a warning that woman should not visit this market alone. Yet, according to an estimate it has 15,000 people any time in the day, including tourists, both domestic and foreign.

As waterlogging in the nearby Ajmeri Gate (Minto Road) has become a regular phenomenon, and in future nothing can be ruled out, has the NDMC made any plan to counter this impending danger?

Fire safety measures

Why just talk about flooding? How many government offices and court rooms throughout the length and breadth of the country follow the fire safety measures or have fire extinguishers been installed there? They are all public places jam-packed with people and have very congested passage to come out.

What about dilapidated government school buildings and hospitals, though in the recent years some improvement has been made. Yet so far fire safety measures are concerned there is no such provision anywhere.

Official apathy

I am witness to one such gross violation of the fire safety norms by a district magistrate. This incident is a bit old, (of 1988) but hardly anything has changed at the grassroots level since then.

When there used to be serious crisis of LPG cylinders throughout the country customers had to wait for weeks to get it. They were asked to take their own cylinder from the LPG dealer’s godown, though as per the rules this should not be allowed. Newspapers, which were the only independent sources of reporting then would often highlight the issue. Though this process of publicly distributing cylinders to hundreds of customers and that too without any fire safety measures or fire-tenders around was not at all permissible.

As a young staff correspondent of The Times of India posted in the historic city of Gaya in Bihar I often used to visit the collectorate to meet the district magistrate or other officials. Those were the heydays of Naxal movement in the entire Central Bihar.

Once when I went to meet the DM, his personal secretary told me to wait in his ante-chamber as Saheb was busy. After waiting for a few minutes, I told him that I want to go to wash-room for urinal. This wash-room of the DM was situated just beside the chair of his secretary. The moment I entered the spacious but unventilated wash room I was surprised to find a LPG cylinder kept in the corner. Those were not days of mobile phones nor I had a camera. Otherwise, I would have taken a snap. I quietly came out regretting that I should have had a camera.

As I had already done several stories on the connivance of local officials in the LPG distribution I did not deem it fit to ask the DM as to what was the cylinder doing in the unventilated wash-room. Perhaps, he might himself did not get it stored there. After all, the LPG dealers used to keep the all powerful DM and other top officials in good humour by regularly supplying them cylinders.

It might have been the handiwork of his personal secretary or other deputy collector rank officials who had temporarily kept the cylinder there after procuring it from the nearby dealers. The plan might have been to take it home in the evening.

The big question is: Had the DM not gone to his wash-room throughout that day? Or had he deliberately ignored it? Or was it a daily practice of keeping filled-cylinder there? I was the rare outsider to go there.

This is just one instance of gross violation of fire safety measures by top officials noticed by me during my reporting years. But there was no scope to highlight them.

There is, of course, no crisis of LPG cylinder now, but officials at the lower level are seen violating many such safety norms throughout the country.

Soroor Ahmed is a Patna-based freelance journalist.

Two ESIC Hospitals in Delhi Recently Failed Their Fire Audits. So Do They Really Care for Patients?

The safety of patients, staff and visitors should be the highest priority for any hospital.

The ESIC Model Hospital in Basaidarapur village, Delhi, recently failed a fire safety audit conducted by the Delhi Fire Services. The audit revealed numerous shortcomings in the public welfare-oriented hospital’s fire safety measures, including the lack of fire check doors in lift lobbies, the absence of a smoke management system in the basement and upper floors, and the lack of exit signage throughout the hospital.

The hospital, which was commissioned on December 1, 1971, with a bed strength of 150 and spread over 31 acres, currently has 600 commissioned beds and 150 observation beds and provides medical facilities to employees and their families who are covered under the Employees State Insurance (ESI) scheme. There is underutilization of a vast chunk of public land; it could have been appropriately used to provide more than ten times the present-day infrastructure and many more thousands of hospital beds.

ESIC (Employees’ State Insurance Corporation) hospitals come under the Ministry of Labour and Employment in India. The ESIC is a self-financing social security and health insurance scheme for Indian workers and their dependents. The ESIC operates a network of hospitals and dispensaries across the country to provide medical treatment and care to its beneficiaries.

Despite spending crores on the construction of a new OPD building in 2019, the hospital failed the fire audit, which was first conducted on March 21, 2022. During the audit, it was discovered that pressurisation had not been provided in lift lobbies and the basement, and the main and standby pumps which had a capacity of 2,850 litres per minute, but were not set on auto mode. Additionally, the hospital had not provided a fire control room, and floor plans were not displayed in prominent locations. Despite various shortcomings being identified, the hospital management failed to take any action to rectify the issues in the nine months that followed. If a fire ever breaks out here, no doubt media reports will highlight how the issues were already known, but not acted upon.

According to the National Building Code of India 2005, chapter 4, the pressurisation of lift lobbies shall be adopted for high rise buildings and building having mixed occupancy or multiplexes having covered area more than 500 square metres. The main and standby pumps are utilised to pump water in buildings for sprinklers and wet risers in the event of a fire outbreak. The pump’s capacity should be 2,850 litres per minute, and it should be set to automatic mode as starting the pump manually in case of a fire outbreak can be difficult and time consuming.

On December 28, 2022, the Delhi Fire Service (DFS) conducted another inspection and found that the hospital had still not addressed the issues identified in the first audit. The fire service then issued guidelines to not use the premises until the shortcomings were rectified, yet the OPD block remains in use by thousands of patients daily. This failure of the hospital management to take action in response to the fire audit raises serious concerns about the safety of patients, doctors and visitors at the hospital. Fire safety in hospitals is a crucial issue that must be taken seriously to protect both patients and staff. Hospitals are complex buildings with many potential fire hazards, including electrical equipment, flammable materials and many people in close proximity. Additionally, a similar situation has come to light at the ESI Hospital in Delhi’s Jhilmil area, where the DFS has written a letter to the administration regarding non-compliance with fire safety norms. In case of further noncompliance, the water and electricity connections of the hospitals will be discontinued. It is a matter of grave concern that these hospitals are still using premises without rectifying shortcomings pointed out by the DFS.

The Basaidarapur hospital has a daily patient load of 1,500-2,000 in the OPD. The building also includes a canteen and a branch of the State Bank of India, for the convenience of patients and visitors. In the OPD, there are 200-300 patients admitted and around 150-200 staff members, including the deputy director of administration and additional medical superintendent (AMS). There are also others who may be visiting for purchasing medicines or to get a COVID-19 vaccine, for instance.

In the event of a fire, the consequences can be devastating, leading to injury and even death. Therefore, it is essential that hospitals have comprehensive fire safety plans in place to minimise the risk and to ensure that everyone is prepared to respond quickly and effectively in the event of an emergency. On January 27, 2023, a complaint letter (by the author who resides near the hospital) was filed to the hospital management and he met the AMS of the hospital Dr Sanjay Mishra and deputy director of administration S.P. Pandey. Both individuals stated that the rectifications were the responsibility of the headquarters and that they had written many letters to the headquarters about the issue. They also stated that the contractor who constructed the building was responsible for rectifying the issues.

However, the question arises as to how the contractor was able to receive completion certificates of the building from the civil authorities and hospital management without adhering to basic fire safety guidelines outlined in the National Building Code 2005, chapter 4. This raises serious concerns about the negligence and lack of accountability on the part of the contractor and civil authorities.

It is imperative that the hospital management takes immediate action to correct the deficiencies identified in the fire safety audit and that those involved in this serious issue are held accountable. The safety of patients, doctors and visitors should be the top priority and any negligence or lack of action in ensuring this safety is unacceptable. It is the duty of the hospital management to ensure that the hospital is equipped with the necessary fire safety measures and that all employees are trained to handle fire emergencies. Furthermore, it is also the duty of the authorities to ensure that contractors follow the fire safety guidelines while constructing buildings.

Aditya Tanwar is a social entrepreneur from Delhi’s Naraina village and a Member of the Centre for Youth Culture Law and Environment (CYCLE), a Delhi based research and advocacy organization for the Delhi villages.

Edited by Jahnavi Sen.

Maharashtra: Hospitals Burn, but Measures To Prevent Them Stay Locked in Files

The Bhandara panel’s recommendations have not been implemented, neither has money been put aside for better fire safety measures.

Mumbai: In early January 2021, 10 infants were killed in a fire at a special newborn care unit of the Bhandara District Hospital in eastern Maharashtra. The state government promptly held the hospital administration responsible and set up a panel to ascertain the fire’s root cause.

The panel, which included former Maharashtra fire service director P.S. Rahangdale, divisional commissioner (Nagpur) Sanjeev Kumar and health service director Sadhana Tayade, subsequently suspended several hospital staff and initiated criminal action for negligence against some.

The state government also reassessed its existing fire safety protocol and conducted a long-overdue audit of state-run hospitals. Its primary goal was to avert similar mishaps in the future.

In the eleven months since the incident, and some six months since the panel’s recommendations, at least six more cases of fire inside hospitals have been reported across Maharashtra, killing at least 55 people and grievously injuring several others. The panel’s recommendations, it would seem, have stayed on paper.

The most recent hospital fire was on November 6, in which 11 people admitted to the Ahmednagar district hospital died.

The panel had recommended setting up an in-house fire response team at each hospital, and another team, with a warden overlooking fire safety measures, on each floor – in every district hospital, primary health centre and other tertiary care setups.

But a senior health official admitted to The Wire that the state had set aside no money to implement this recommendation, among others, in most districts.

In fact, the state is also yet to create a position for ‘fire officers’ across the state. After the disaster last week, state health minister Rajesh Tope had said at a press briefing that fire officers were compulsory in every health centre and that a dedicated response team should exist as well.

Also read: From Fire Safety to Urban Planning, Indian Regulations Are Not Working

The panel’s recommendations already included this measure, rendering the minister’s idea six months delayed.

Even the Bhandara District Hospital, the accident at which created the panel and its subsequent recommendations, has not received fire safety equipment that the state had promised.

“Among the many recommendations, the most immediate proposed were resetting the newborn care unit, which had been destroyed in the fire, and installation of a fire-fighting system meant to tackle such large-scale fires in future,” a senior member of the hospital’s administrative staff told The Wire. “Neither of them has been provided to us so far.”

A senior official in the state’s health department confirmed that the recommendations – which require funds to be drawn from each district’s public works department – are yet to be released in most districts.

The direct impact of the delay manifested as the fire, sparked by faulty electrical wiring, in the Ahmednagar District Hospital on November 6, in which 11 persons – all with severe COVID-19 – were killed. The area where the fire spread was a COVID-ward and had 17 patients on that day.

Soon after, the state government suspended Ahmednagar district civil surgeon Dr Sunil Pokharna, medical officers Dr Suresh Dhakne and Dr Vishakha Shinde, and staff nurse Sapna Pathare. The services of two staff nurses, Asma Shaikh and Channa Anant, were also terminated. All of them except Dr Pokharna been arrested under sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 304A (causing death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code.

Those visibly responsible may have been taken to task – but what of those at the more powerful decision-making positions?

The Bhandara incident prompted Ahmednagar district officials to draw up a plan worth over Rs 5 crore. It stipulated installing fire-fighting systems in all primary health centres and in civil hospitals. But the corresponding file hasn’t moved out of the state public health department, an official in the Ahmednagar hospital’s administration, told The Wire.

“The hospital staff can’t do much without adequate funds,” the official said. The official is also likely to face a departmental inquiry after the November 6 tragedy.

State health infrastructure, especially in rural India, has been a never-ending concern. Dinanath Waghmare, convenor of Sangharh Vahini, an NGO working with the very-marginalised denotified tribes and nomadic tribes in the state, said Maharashtra has failed to care for its poor citizens.

He had petitioned the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court seeking better care facilities in state-run hospitals; it remains pending.

“It is essentially the poor who avail medical care at state-run facilities,” Waghmare said. “The rich can afford better facilities. By ignoring basic safety measures, the state is making it clear that it doesn’t care for its marginalised people.”

According to him, the Bhandara panel’s recommendation has also been submitted to the court, including its 15 major points. In Waghmare’s telling, they are nothing exceptional. “But even the most basic safety facilities are missing” on the ground. “Imagine – the state has to set up a panel to state the most obvious things.”

Noida: SC Directs Demolition of Supertech Emerald’s Twin 40-Storey Towers in 3 Months

The apex court directed that the entire amount of homebuyers be refunded with 12% interest from the time of booking, and the cost of the entire demolition exercise has to be borne by Supertech.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court Monday directed demolition of twin 40-storey towers of Supertech’s Emerald Court project in Noida for violation of building by-laws.

The apex court directed that the entire amount of homebuyers be refunded with 12% interest from the time of booking and the Residents’ Welfare Association (RWA) be paid Rs 2 crore for the harassment caused due to the construction of the twin towers.

A bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and M.R. Shah said that April 11, 2014 verdict of the Allahabad high court, which directed demolition of twin towers, does not deserve any interference.

It said the construction of Supertech’s twin 40 storey towers having 915 flats and shops was done in collusion with Noida (New Okhla Industrial Development Area) authority and the Allahabad high court was correct in holding that view. The high court had passed the judgement while hearing a writ petition of the Emerald Court Owners RWA, which alleged that the approval and construction of the two towers was “in complete violation of the UP Apartment Acts”.

“This construction dilutes safety standards (and) illegalities have to be dealt with strictly. (The) sanction given by Noida authorities is violative of building regulations… goes against minimum distance requirements between towers… fire safety norms have been violated… garden area was violated to construct the towers,” the apex court said, as per an NDTV report.

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However, Vikas Singh, the lawyer representing the firm, had said, “We have followed the minimum distance criteria, followed the fire safety norms and all other parameters. There was no illegality as canvassed by the home buyers.”

The top court bench said that the demolition exercise of the twin towers be carried out within three months under the supervision of Noida Authority and an expert agency, and the cost of the entire exercise has to be borne by Supertech Ltd.

The top court said that recently it has seen rampant unauthorised construction in metropolitan areas in collusion with planning authorities and it has to be dealt with sternly.

According to the report, in the previous hearing, the top court had also demanded to know why and how the Noida authorities, in their “eternal wisdom”, permitted large construction projects such as this in a designated ‘green area’.

(With inputs from PTI)

From Fire Safety to Urban Planning, Indian Regulations Are Not Working

Year after year, people are dying in incidents that are termed ‘accidents’ but are actually man-made disasters.

People wade through flood waters in rain-hit Chennai in 2015. Credit: PTI

India’s cities – big and small, in the north and south – are sitting around a bonfire of regulations, basic tenets of urban planning and precious human lives. The December Mumbai fire is the latest reminder. We haven’t learnt our lessons from the gruesome Uphaar Cinema fire that killed 59 people and seriously injured 103 people in the national capital in 1997.

Here are some of the major fire incidents that took place in the last 14 years. Some places that are frequent victims – temples and firecracker units in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, for example – don’t even come under the strict demographic definition of urban areas.

Carlton Towers, Bengaluru, 2010; nine dead, 70 injured.
SUM Hospital, Bhubaneswar, 2015; 22 dead, 120 injured.
Surya Sen street market, Kolkata, 2013; 19 dead, ten injured.
Amri (Dhakuria) Hospital, Kolkata, 2011; 73 dead.
The Park Street, Kolkata, 2010; 16 dead.
Kurla (West), Mumbai, 2015; eight dead.
Kumbakonam, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, 2004; 83 dead, 27 injured – all school children.
Srirangam, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, 2004; 57 dead, 50 injured.
Nand Nagri, east Delhi, 2011; 15 dead, 65 injured.
The Victoria Park, Meerut, 2006; 65 dead, 81 injured.
Paravur, Kollam, Kerala, 2016; 111 dead, 350 injured.
Mudalipatti, Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, 2016; 38 dead, 33 injured.
Mudalipatti, Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, 2012; 54 dead, 78 injured.
Khusropur, Patna, Bihar, 2005; 35 dead, 50 injured.

According to National Crime Records Bureau figures, 17,700 Indians died – 48 people every day – due to fire accidents in 2015. Of those who died, 62% were women. Maharashtra and Gujarat, our two most highly urbanised states, account for about 30% of the country’s fire accident deaths. There is a close correlation between deaths due to fire-related accidents and population density associated with urbanisation.

In cities after cities, towns after towns, year after year, Indians are getting killed and burnt in fire incidents. Technically speaking, these are not accidents; they are man-made disasters, manufactured by a mix of half-baked regulations and compromised enforcement machinery and powerful interest groups. They are actually planning-made problems.

This is a classic example of India’s ‘disposal problem’ (a phrase borrowed from the history of the US foreign policy). Let’s see the usefulness of this concept in our context.

The ‘disposal problem’ refers to how a well-entrenched people, practice or protocol (interest groups, professional cliques, sellers or buyers in a market place, rules, laws, standard operating procedures, institutional matrix, collective mores and folkways, etc.) can end up defeating the very purpose for which it was created in the first place. There is an element of “unintended consequence of purposive behaviour” (Robert K. Merton, 1936).

Also read: The Kamala Mills Fire, and Other Accidents Waiting to Happen

For example, every historical change in modes of warfare has produced a disposal problem in terms of trained and battle-hardened soldiers: what to do with much-eulogised and no-longer-needed troops. During the second term of US President Ronald Reagan, the disposal problem was: what was to be done with the Nicaraguan mercenaries, who were until then one of the major armies of Central America, and their ex-CIA Cuban and American handlers, a powerful constituency inside the Pentagon? In the 15th century, a problem much like this one – what to do with bloodthirsty knights who lived off the land – was a powerful motive for England to prolong the Hundred Years’ War and keep the knights busy in France.

These were the US and England then. This is India now.

The Kamala Mills building after the fire. Credit: PTI

A case in point is the origin and prosperity of the water mafia in the national capital. The official water supply falls short of New Delhi’s needs by at least 207 million gallons each day, according to a 2013 audit by the office of the comptroller and auditor general. A quarter of Delhi’s households live without a piped-water connection; most of the rest receive water for only a few hours each day. So residents have come to rely, as shown by Aman Sethi’s field reporting, on private truck owners – the most visible strands of a dispersed web of city councillors, farmers, real estate agents and fixers who source millions of gallons of water each day from illicit boreholes, as well as the city’s leaky pipe network, and sell the liquid for profit. Any attempt to tackle Delhi’s water crisis will have to first involve dismantling the bureaucracy-business-water mafia nexus.

Another example is Chennai’s land mafia and how it caused the end-2015 floods. The Adyar river in the south of the original city had a spacious estuary and a broad flood plain. Many areas south of the river were marshy and low-lying, serviced by small rivulets and canals. Because of decades of faulty urban planning and the state’s hurry to industrialise, industrial complexes, educational institutions and housing estates have ravaged the watershed areas, filling up thousands of smaller ponds and streams and silting major tanks and increasing the surface water flow manifold. Between 1996 and 2015, more than 1,000 acres of this wetland was allegedly illegally diverted to accommodate industrial installations belonging to state-owned companies, including a large port and several coal-fired power plants.

Also read: Did Chennai Learn Anything From the 2015 Floods?

After the unprecedented rain 2015, this increased run-off found its way into the city. While the unusual rains have caused the disaster, the impact would not have been so severe in the absence of the man-made factors. The planned developments along the Adyar river that reduced its capacity as an outlet are largely government initiated, as the river bed was under government ownership. All the swamps, marsh lands, low-lying areas and streams that the big corporations, middle-class housing and slums have been built on are inundated as they are at the receiving end of overflowing large regional tanks. The state’s inability to enforce environmental laws and insatiable greed for land grabbing by both national and international commercial interests are in full play in Chennai. Any endeavour to undo the damage done by the organised encroachers to Chennai’s watershed and wetland areas will have to start with breaking apart the bureaucracy-real estate business nexus.

India’s disposal problem is manifest in the context of urban fire safety as well. For example, Mumbai’s building norms have enough loopholes, such as norms not applying for establishments with a seating capacity of less than 50 people. Secondly, the city has failed to invest in LIDAR-based (Light Detection and Ranging) technologies that can be used to aerially keep a track of setbacks and the presence of fire exits.

As the city grows vertically, manpower-intensive physical inspection is not required to enforce all fire safety regulations. Moreover, adequate space could have easily been retained for essential services like fire stations while redeveloping mill land, but the city didn’t do it. There is a business-bureaucracy nexus working everywhere.

India’s policy makers have a serious disposal problem at their hands when it comes to urban planning and management. From fire safety to waste recycling, from energy efficiency to water supply, from housing to traffic safety, the organised interest groups have infiltrated the state machinery and have been successful in damaging public interests as a matter of daily existence. By 2050, about 70% of the population will be living in cities and India is no exception. Mere post-incident sound bytes from the politicians and law enforcement agencies won’t help our urban population.

Basant Rath is 2000 batch IPS officer who belongs to the Jammu and Kashmir cadre. Views expressed are personal.

The Kamala Mills Fire, and Other Accidents Waiting to Happen

In central Mumbai’s metamorphosis from an old working-class area to a rich people’s playground, zoning laws and safety regulations have been ignored.

A view from the street after a fire broke out in a building in Mumbai on Friday. Credit: PTI

Mumbai: On the face of it, the stampede at the Elphinstone Road railway station in September 2017 and last week’s fire in a upscale rooftop bar are totally different and unconnected mishaps. But the roots of the tragedies are interlinked – they happened in the old mill district of Mumbai which is now home to chrome and steel buildings, offices, expensive tower blocks, malls and tony restaurants. In this metamorphosis from an old working-class area to a rich people’s playground, zoning laws and safety regulations have been ignored.

Serving as corporate spaces for many multinational companies and media houses during the day time, its landscape transforms into a heady party space by the evening. These otherwise dull-looking office spaces suddenly turn lively, with people visiting pubs and restaurants which have come up in the recent years. Central Mumbai, where Kamala Mills and Elphinstone Road are, is now a favourite hangout for both office-goers and college youngsters. The mix-use means that at no time is the area uncrowded. During its heyday as a mill district, the ebb and flow was linked to mill shifts and at night there was hardly anyone there.

This transformation, however, has not been smooth. The 14 deaths in the early hours of December 28 at a high-end restaurant, 1Above, in the Kamala Mills compound in Lower Parel is only a grim reminder of this haphazard conversion. The sprawling 37-acre compound is now bursting at the seams and several major restaurant companies have opened outlets here; but little or no fundamental alteration was made to the space. In Kamala Mills as well as other former industrial spaces, restaurants and high-end bars operate in former storage spaces, where alterations such as making emergency exits are simply not possible.

Movement in these former mills is restricted. Only in Kamala Mills, where at least 35 restaurants operate, cars are constantly dropping off customers. In other places, there is no room for one car to pass, forget a fire engine. The building are in terribly crammed spaces and sticking to each other, and the number of exits is far from enough. The victims at 1Above were unable to make their way outside and were asphyxiated while taking shelter in toilets.

Civic authorities have gone on a demolition spree against irregular extensions and structures in restaurants all over Mumbai, but it now emerges that 1Above was given a fire safety certificate barely a week before the tragedy. That there is corruption in the civic body is well known, but owners too want to take the easy way out instead of genuinely looking for ways to improve safety. “Had they done their duty and acted against the restaurant for flouting norms, this would not have happened,” civic chief Ajoy Mehta said.

But the problem is not just at the implementation level, policies too are flawed. Soon after the November 26, 2008 terror attacks in the city, an eight-member committee led by former IAS officer N.V. Mirani was set up to take stock of security measures in the city. In its six-volume report, the committee dealt with ‘fire’ as a separate topic and recommended guidelines to make buildings in the city explosive-resistant to avert fire mishaps. “These recommendations were to be implemented on an urgent basis,” said I.C. Sisodiya, a former vigilance officer of the municipal corporation. He further added, “The committee had submitted a detailed manual on fire safety directives. Regular auditing and evaluation of buildings against fire hazards due to electrical short circuits was one of its most crucial recommendations.” The committee recommended that the security staff should be trained to fight fire. Mock drills were also to be carried out.

But this is more an exception than the rule. The owner of a small café in the Raghuvanshi Mills building in the area said, “We have two fire extinguishers here. But my staff is not trained to handle them.” The reason, she said, is that fire drills are never conducted. “Hygiene and food quality is within our control and we take full care of it. But the fire drill needs to be done by specialised teams and at a regular intervals. We don’t have the know-how and have never got any instructions from the fire brigade on handling fire,” she claimed.

Madhav Pai, India director of the WRI Ross Centre for Sustainable Cities, claims one cannot look at the recent tragedy in isolation. It goes back to the 1990s, when mills were shutting down and the government, through a series of decisions, allowed mill owners to commercially exploit their properties without any concern for civic good.

People try to rescue those stuck in the stampede on the Parel-Elphinstone foot over bridge. Credit: PTI/Files

A committee led by by town planner and architect Charles Correa had suggested keeping one-third of the available land as free space; this was overridden as the the mill owners won a challenge to this change in the Supreme Court. Of the nearly 600 acres in the mills, only a small percentage was set aside for homes for former mill workers; the rest was for free commercial exploitation. Within a few short years, the entire Lower Parel-Elphinstone area changed, with shiny new structures coming up and a demographic shift that sidelined the old workers. The area’s infrastructure just couldn’t handle it: traffic jams are routine and huge numbers of people pour out of the trains every few minutes, whether day and night.

But it is not just the cramped conditions that are responsible. The complete lack of safety protocols and the poor enforcement of the few regulations that do exist play a big role in such tragedies. R.A. Venkitachalam, an advisor at the Centre for Safety Engineering, IIT Gandhinagar, says that the raw material widely used in designing most of the newly set- up office and restaurant spaces make them highly prone to fire accidents. “The calorific value of the raw material used is much higher and when fire breaks, and with no ventilation, people are bound to choke. Almost 90% deaths in fire accidents occur due to inhaling toxic gases,” Venkitachalam said.

According to the National Crime Record Bureau, a total of 18,450 cases of fire accidents were reported in India in 2015, with 1,193 persons injured and 17,700 killed. A majority of the fire accidents were reported in Maharashtra, accounting for 22% of the total number. Mumbai remains a major contributor to this statistic. In Mumbai alone, according to the data, 223 persons died in fire incidents in 2015. In the last ten years, 3,781 persons have died in the city because of this cause.

In a rapidly-growing city like Mumbai with a population of over 20 million, growth of commercial spaces and urban centres are inevitable. When commercial spaces shifted from south to central Mumbai over a decade ago, the burden shifted onto the existing infrastructure. “The stampede at Elphinstone railway station is a classic example of that. I do not see any difference in what happened at the railway station and what happened at the restaurant. The only difference is one was in the public realm and other in a private space,” Pai said.

For Mumbai citizens, the sudden burst of activity on the part of civic authorities to demolish illegal structures is all too familiar. It is a knee-jerk reaction to show that something is being done. Soon enough, things will return to normal – both owners and the authorities will lapse into their usual way of doing things. Until the basics – fire drills, infrastructure changes such as fire exits, up to date fire fighting equipment – are attended to, there are fears that more such tragedies will happen.

UK Announces Fire Safety Review After Report Finds 82 Unsafe Tower Blocks

Britain announced a fire safety review on Friday after tests post last month’s deadly tower block blaze in London found a cladding system used on 82 buildings breached regulations.

Demonstrators protest against the Grenfell Tower fire outside a Kensington and Chelsea Council meeting at Kensington Town Hall in London. Credit: Reuters/Neil Hall

London: Britain announced a review of building and fire safety rules on Friday after tests conducted following last month’s deadly tower block blaze in London found a cladding system known to be used on 82 buildings breached regulations.

Police have said they believe the system of insulation and cladding panels added during a refurbishment of Grenfell Tower may have contributed to the rapid spread of the fire in which 80 people died.

After initial testing highlighted potential fire risks in buildings across the country, a second, more extensive round of tests found a specific cladding system known to be in use on 82 buildings did not meet building regulations, the government said in a statement.

Alongside the release of the test results, ministers ordered an independent review of building regulations and fire safety.

“It’s clear we need to urgently look at building regulations and fire safety,” communities minister Sajid Javid said in a statement. “This independent review will ensure we can swiftly make any necessary improvements.”

The review will look at the existing regulatory system, compliance and enforcement of the regulations, and will draw on similar regulations overseas.

Friday’s results are the first to be published from six sets of tests involving three different types of aluminium composite material combined with two different types of insulation.

The government said immediate action was already underway to ensure the safety of residents in the affected buildings, without giving further details.

The BBC reported on Thursday that police investigating the fire believe there are grounds to suspect that corporate manslaughter may have been committed by the local council.

(Reuters)

34 London Tower Blocks Evacuated After Failing Fire Safety Tests

In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower blaze the residents were asked to evacuate their homes after failed fire safety checks, as a “mitigating action”.

Firefighters stand outside the Burnham Tower residential block, as residents were evacuated as a precautionary measure following concerns over the type of cladding used on the outside of the building on the Chalcots Estate in north London, Britain, June 24, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Hannah McKay

London: Britain said 34 high-rise apartment blocks had failed fire safety checks carried out after the deadly Grenfell Tower blaze, including several in north London where residents were forced to evacuate amid chaotic scenes.

British officials have conducted tests on some 600 high-rise buildings across England after fire ravaged the Grenfell social tower block in west London on June 14, killing at least 79 people in the capital’s most deadly blaze since World War Two.

The Department for Communities said 34 apartment blocks had failed tests in 17 parts of the country, from London in the southeast to Manchester in the north and Plymouth on the southwest coast.

Prime Minister Theresa May, who was forced to apologise for the government’s initial slow response to the tragedy, said the authorities were now racing to establish what needed to be done.

“In some cases it’s possible to take mitigating action,” she told Sky news. “In others it’s been necessary for people to move out on a temporary basis and that is what happened in Camden last night.”

Some 4,000 residents of the Chalcots Estate in Camden, north London, were told to vacate their apartments on Friday after the Fire Brigade ruled that their blocks were unsafe.

Emerging into the streets on a hot night, residents clutched children, pets and small amounts of clothing and food to try to find a bed in a local hotel or with family or friends. Many were directed to inflatable beds laid out on the floor of the local sports hall.

“I know it’s difficult but Grenfell changes everything,” Georgia Gould, Leader of Camden Council, said in a statement. “I don’t believe we can take any risks with our residents’ safety.”

May said the local authority would be given all the means necessary to make sure people had somewhere to stay.

Residents complained of first hearing about the evacuation from the media and getting very short notice to leave from city officials going door-to-door. Not all residents agreed to go, as they felt the evacuation was an over-reaction.

Public anger

Residents are evacuated from the Burnham Tower residential block as a precautionary measure following concerns over the type of cladding used on the outside of the building on the Chalcots Estate in north London, Britain, June 24, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Hannah McKay

“It was farcical communication,” 21-year-old Daniel Tackaberry told Reuters outside a nearby sports centre where the local council had laid out air beds. “You don’t get everyone to leave this quickly.”

Several local councils said they were removing cladding from the facades of buildings that had failed the tests. In Camden, however, the London Fire Brigade found a number of faults, including concern about cladding, faulty fire doors and holes in compartment walls that could help a fire to spread.

Gould, the Camden council’s leader, said it would take up to four weeks to repair the blocks that were evacuated.

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said the government was working with local authorities and fire services to address any problems that had been found.

“We are now rapidly identifying buildings of concern: samples are being tested very quickly; fire inspectors are checking the safety of the buildings as a whole; and we have issued interim safety guidance,” he said.

Police investigating the cause of the 24-storey Grenfell Tower blaze have said the fire started in a fridge but spread rapidly due to external cladding on the building, trapping residents in their beds as they slept.

The cladding has since failed all safety checks and prompted a nationwide review of the materials used on everything from hospitals to hotels and apartment blocks.

The fire has become a flashpoint for public anger at the record of May’s Conservative Party in government following cuts to local authority budgets designed to lower the national deficit. Grenfell Tower is located in Kensington, one of the richest boroughs in Europe.

Battling to save her position after losing her majority in a June 8 election, May has promised to do everything she can to protect those residents who survived the fire and to improve the quality and safety of public housing in Britain.

British police have said they are considering bringing manslaughter charges over the Grenfell fire.

(Reuters)