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FIRE SAFETY IS COMPULSORY BECAUSE FIRE ACCIDENTS ARE NOT AS UNCOMMON AS WE WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE

·         A fire broke out on the ninth floor of a building at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on Wednesday, as reported June 16^th. 26 fire tenders were dispatched after the fire control room received a distress call at 10.25 pm. A fire officer told HT that "the fire started at an office in the convergence block within the campus. The fire-fighting operation is on. 26 fire tenders have been sent. There are no casualties yet."

·         Creative Peripherals and Distribution Limited has informed that there was a fire incident at company's warehouse in Bangalore, India on Tuesday, 8h June 2021. The inventory and warehouse are fully insured, and the Company has submitted all relevant documentation to the insurance company for its survey as per norms, including Fire Dept. Certificate, Police report and inventory report.

·         Pune district collector has initiated an inquiry into the fire accident at an industrial plant that has claimed 18 lives in Pirangut area under Mulshi tehsil of Pune on Monday evening, as reported June 7. Officials of the Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority (PMRDA) will be part of the four-member committee that will ascertain the cause of the fire and whether all safety-related compliances were in place.

·         Ganesha Ecosphere has said that a major fire accident had taken place at the Company's unit manufacturing Polyester Staple Fiber located at Raipur (Rania), District Kanpur Dehat-209304, on Friday, 4 June 2021 at around 3:30 A. MThe fire was brought under the control with the help of the fire brigade.There was no loss or injury to human life. The fire was widespread and has resulted in major damage to the building, machinery, raw material and finished goods, thereby disrupting the operations of Kanpur Polyester Staple Fiber Unit.

·         The fire that broke out in Sri Bhagavathi Amman Temple in Mandaikadu on June 2 was due to human error and not a sabotage, Minister for Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments P.K. Sekar Babu said. The interim report submitted by the panel after questioning eight persons revealed human error as the reason behind the fire accident and no sabotage was established.

Prolite, as you know, is a market leader in exigency equipment and tools such as emergency lights and photoluminescent signs. But we are not static. We evolve with time. The nature of risk differs from place to place. The same paraphernalia that need to be installed in a chemical unit will not match those to be installed at a hospital. We, at Prolite, need to assess the factors at play every time we take up a job. The size of the place, the footfalls, the architecture, the material used in construction, the interiors and the overall risk assessment has to be done by us first before we work out what, how many, where and how.

We are in the third week of June, and just a cursory glance at major fire news shows that quite a few mishaps have dotted this month. We can see that the above reported June accidents have happened in Industrial units, temples, hospitals or places where people gather in large numbers. However, it needs to be stressed that all fires are not reported. What is actually reported is just the tip of the iceberg.

The risk to life is more in crowded places than in a situation where say one or two people get trapped. Even though every single life is precious, fire safety becomes a priority in places where people congregate in greater numbers. This increases probability of casualties in case of an incident and many tragic incidents in the past have proven the point. If you are not located in a big city and that too in a major corporate unit or hospital or similar locations, chances are that a fire may consume you and no one will ever know.

Many are unaware or do not realise that the cost of safety paraphernalia required at any location to be deemed adequately fire safe, is mostly a small fraction of the costs spent in decoration and interiors. But while the primary is mandatory and the secondary optional, people act as if the reverse were true. Not only are corners cut in safety, in some cases they are altogether avoided to ‘save cost’.

Therefore, it is commonplace nowadays for any fire hit location -with or without loss of lives- to be found non-compliant with basic legal safety protocols and people right from the owner, to the architect to the fire officer who issued safety licences in exchange for handouts Have found themselves either behind bars or facing serious law suits and cases.

At the cost of being overtly repetitive, we still need to send out the message, yet again, that if you have been lax on fire security till now, get off the couch and get on the ball. If a mishap happens, you may not get the time to regret it even.