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What if you are in a situation more serious than a simple power failure? What if the cause of darkness or poor visibility is smoke caused by fire? What if that place is not even your own and you are unfamiliar with the premises? What if panic sets in and in the darkness you collide with obstacles or get caught in a stampede? And what if there is no emergency lighting system installed? How long does it take for smoke to suffocate you to death?

Difficult and scary questions indeed, but we need to ask them now because if it happens, we would most probably have no time left to find those answers. And it could happen right now, even as you read this.

All of us, at some time or the other, have found ourselves in pitch darkness, in power failures. What is our first knee jerk instinct? It is the effort to SEE in that darkness. Of all our senses, the sense of sight is the primary instinct in any difficult or even panic situation. Therefore, if in our effort to see we chance upon a bright light or a sign we rush towards it and look for a way out from there. At home, most of us keep candles or a flashlight in places where we can reach them easily if lights fail. So if ‘seeing’ in the dark is the question-PROLITE AUTOGLO is certainly the answer.

Emergency lights are vital in public places so that people can be expatriated safely at times of crisis without panic. Due to this, bright and visible sign boards in prescribed size and color are installed at exit gates or exit routes. Theaters, commercial buildings, educational institutions, healthcare centers, residential buildings, industrial buildings, and manufacturing plants are required to be equipped with emergency lights. It should be positioned at places such as escape routes, at change of directions in the escape route, corridors, elevators, near first aid spots, staircases, and at changes in floor level.

PROLITE AUTOGLO is today, one of the country’s leading manufacturers and suppliers of a humongous range of photoluminescence safety signages and emergency lights suitable for all purposes. PROLITE also exports its product ranges to different counties and with its own in-house engineering team, provides swift and efficient after sales services to its customers in India. Also, PROLITE provides the requisite consultancy at the pre construction stage and accurately identifies and pinpoints the locations of each light and each sign, in conformity with the latest prescribed standards.

“Our large, and continuously growing list of satisfied customers bear testimony to our commitment to ensuring the best attention to the minutest of detail. This means that whenever you need us we, at PROLITE, are always willing to step in at any stage, to supply, install and if necessary, improve upon your signage and lighting requirements”, says a Prolite engineer on the sidelines of ELECRAMA 2018.

“My experience started in 1984, being a trader in the electrical field I entered the field of emergency lighting and I had no idea what it was at that time”, says Harsha Joshi, pioneer and CEO, PROLITE AUTOGLO as he goes down memory lane. Since then it has been a fascinating journey and a learning experience, according to Joshi.

SAFETY AND SECURITY MEANS EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED

When a plan is drawn up to construct a building, a colony, a bungalow, a godown or an office complex or any closed structure for that matter, one would require a whole lot of permissions, licenses, clearances and so on before one can even begin. Convention thinking says that the formalities can be bifurcated into two broad categories-One, absolutely necessary and two, important but avoidable.

However, the ingenuity of our ‘chalta hai’ culture has developed a third category which is widely resorted to- Absolutely necessary and yet avoidable. And one item that falls squarely in that category is Emergency lights. So, are emergency lights a dire necessity? Or can their installation be termed an avoidable expense?

EXPEDIENCY COMES WITH AN EXPIRY DATE……. WHICH NO ONE CAN PREDICT

Most of those unfortunate people who die due to fire or smoke in closed premises do so due to the sins of others and some-for sins of their own too. The building code is pretty clear about it being imperative on the part of the owners, builders and planners to install necessary fire prevention tools and exigency lightings and signs in enclosed spaces. Yet, due to sheer apathy and expediency, these are often either soft pedaled or out rightly ignored. The more recent Kamala Mills horror in Mumbai that claimed 14 innocent lives still haunts us as a case of abject negligence in precisely these areas.

It has been the practice to cut corners in fire safety protocols to save money or time at the very early stages of any construction or business establishment. This is based on two very common perceptions that are both erroneous and dangerous. One, that it is ‘Chalta hai’ to ignore this and that because no one bothers anyway. 

Well, maybe two ‘Yug’s ‘ Yug Tuli and Yug Pathak will definitely testify today that it was their fatal mistake to go by both these perceptions. As also, will the architects and developers of the Kamala Mills compound and so many others where the authorities are going hammer and tongs (literally) destroying illegal constructions, extensions and establishments that are in breach of fire safety norms. It took this episode to wake up the administration from their slumber and ever since, action is being taken on establishments who do not conform across the country.

It has now been established that developers and builders who bribe their way to get licences and clearances may not have it so easy in future. The public outcry against the horrible deaths at the Kamala mills rooftop fire have reached a crescendo and no government or civic authority dare to carry on with business as usual any longer. Also, the spate of accidents that have followed only added to the outrage and anger against the authorities and old sins are being dug out and people who have been sitting pretty so far satiated on bribe money are having sleepless nights.

PROLITE WORKS AT INNOVATION-TO MAKE YOUR PREMISES SAFER

The central battery model or inverter model as it was earlier known, is still widely in use and popular in emergency lighting. The basic flaw with the inverter model is that if the battery backup mechanism is disabled or fails, all the lights that draw from it will become useless. But PROLITE has now added a new concept of self contained emergency lighting solutions for greater security and safety at all times. With this, each individual light has its own battery which is compact, easily hidden from view and yet ensures maximum efficiency in a blackout or power failure situation. What’s more, in case lights are already installed, Prolite’s converter kit can be fitted on to make it a dual purpose instrument, i.e. a normal light in ideal conditions and an emergency light if power fails.

The exigency solutions’ company from India participated in ELECRAMA-2018 recently. The overwhelming response that the company got there was satisfying indeed. The company stood out this time by introducing for the first time ever, a virtual reality digital experience where an individual wears a set of goggles and virtually ‘experiences’ himself/herself being trapped inside a hotel room or an office when a blackout or fire occurs in conditions where there would be no emergency lighting or luminescent signage support in one case and where there would be adequate lightings and signage in another.  The first part of the one and a half odd minute experience leaves the viewer in a state of shock and drives home the need to install in place adequate and strategic exigency solutions in closed spaces in order to be prepared for such horrifying experiences which do not come with warnings or notice.