On February 23 this year, it will be 16 years since the horrific fire tragedy at Carlton Towers on Old Airport Road in Bengaluru. The fire claimed nine lives and left more than 60 injured, many of the survivors still nursing the physical and mental trauma from that ill-fated day.
In a grim reminder that despite struggles and efforts by organisations like fire safety advocacy group Beyond Carlton, fire accidents continue to pose a real and present danger in an increasingly congested city like Bengaluru, a wheelchair-bound octogenarian was charred to death at 2.20 am on Thursday when a suspected short circuit set off a fire in his house where he lived alone in Mailasandra near Kengeri in Bengaluru.
A grimmer reminder than that is that while most of the deaths occurred in the Carlton Towers fire tragedy due to lack of exits to enable the people to escape from the fire and dense smoke that asphyxiated them, many buildings in Bengaluru continue to lack easy exits to escape fires. It is as if tragedies are waiting to happen despite the tragic lessons learnt from the past.
People need to understand that most fire tragedies can be prevented. In almost all fire accidents, violation of safety norms is the prime cause for the tragedies. The most common violations were found to be closed doors that were locked and sealed, use of inflammable substances, lack of well delineated fire escape routes, and – the most shocking – lack of fire safety awareness.
Beyond Carlton was set up by Uday Vijayan, the grief-stricken father of Akhil Uday, who was just 22 years old when his life was snuffed out by the tragedy. Post the Carlton Towers fire tragedy, a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed by Beyond Carlton, which resulted in the state government issuing a notification in 2011 under Section 13 of the Karnataka Fire Services Act which focuses on fire prevention in high-rise buildings (that are of 15 metres height or more). The notification states that a No-Objection Certificate (NOC) from the Fire & Emergency Services Department is needed for a new building; and that it needs to be renewed every two years. It also lists penalties for not obtaining the NOC.
But one of the main demands of Beyond Carlton has been to effectively spread awareness among the people with the focus on prevention and fighting fires. It has been asking for setting up a formal Fire Wardens Organisation within the Karnataka State Fire & Emergency Services Department. The wardens will carry out periodic audits for fire safety violations in their buildings; conduct fire safety awareness sessions for the citizens; be the designated Disaster Recovery Personnel (DRP) and help in evacuation during a fire; and be the first responders during any fire accident and help firemen in firefighting.
Fire wardens do exist in Bengaluru, but they are not officially under the department, although the initiative is under consideration following Beyond Carlton’s insistence. These fire wardens are trained to identify fire hazards, manage evacuations, and guide people during fire emergencies. Their training is provided by institutions like The Safe Talk Academy and RA Mundkur Fire & Emergency Services Academy. However, presently, fire wardens exist primarily within corporate offices, commercial high-rise buildings and industrial sectors to ensure fire safety compliance and evacuation management, but they are conspicuous by their absence in residential areas – and that is where the underbelly lies vulnerable to fires.
Besides, infrastructural inadequacies remain. Inadequate number of fire stations (Bengaluru ideally needs one for every 10 square km, but where’s the space?); lack of adequate number of aerial ladders of more than 50 metres for buildings taller than that (and there are over 400 buildings in the city over that height); the congested traffic restricting easy, quick movement of fire engines through the city roads; and narrow access points making it difficult for fire engines to reach the best suited spot to fight fire, are some of the problems that exist.
In fact, the state’s forest department is better placed – even technologically – to monitor forest fires than the state fire department is to monitor fires in a congested city like Bengaluru. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) provides near-real-time forest fire alerts and monitoring services, typically six to eight times daily during the fire season – which is from mid-January to May – using data from sensors like Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on two NASA satellites Terra and Aqua, and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard the joint National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA)-National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) and NOAA-20 satellites. These alerts, which include geo-coordinates of fire locations, are sent to the Forest Survey of India (FSI), state forest departments, and via the Bhuvan Geoportal for fire management. Besides, ISRO has supported specific initiatives like the fully automated fire detection system for Karnataka and similar systems for Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.
However, the main challenge lies in preventing and fighting fires in Bengaluru and other fast-growing cities. But we need fire in our bellies to prevent and fight fires in heavily populated locations. And it’s not an impossible task, however challenging it may seem.