Fire fighters spray water on the demolished four-storey Metro House located near Regal Cinema in Colaba Causeway. A major fire broke out in the house. (Photo: Shripad Naik)
Fire fighters spray water on the demolished four-storey Metro House located near Regal Cinema in Colaba Causeway. A major fire broke out in the house. (Photo: Shripad Naik)
The six-hour-long fire-fighting operations to douse the fire that broke out at Colaba’s Metro House has estimatedly cost about 75,000 Mumbaikars their daily water supply, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials said. The Mumbai Fire Brigade, which pressed around 18 fire engines, four water tankers and five private water tankers into service, used a total of nine million litres of potable water to extinguish the fire, which was raging on till late Thursday night.
The fire, prima facie, appears to have been caused by a short circuit. Keeping in mind the scarcity of potable water in the state and the voluminous amount of water that was required to douse the conflagration, civic body officials have swung into action to ascertain the reason why the building’s owners had failed to obey the law.
Rahangdale, chief fire officer, has confirmed that Metro House did not have the most basic fire safety apparatus in place.
He said, “The building had a couple of fire extinguishers. But since it is a very old structure, it did not have the complete fire safety set-up, like sprinklers and hose pipes, which had definitely caused an inconvenience during the fire fighting operation.” While the investigation into the cause of the fire is still underway, the fire brigade and the police have yet to narrow down on the main reason behind it.
A senior civic official, on the condition of anonymity, said, “Most owners are stingy about spending some money and securing fire safety apparatus for the building. Basic measures can help avert a fire. On a disaster like this one, the civic body spends tremendous resources, manpower, and a scarce resource like water in this case, to control the damage. The entire area of Colaba came to a standstill on Thursday and traffic had to be diverted from a busy street in the peak hours of the evening.”
Sources from the hydraulics department of the civic body said, considering that the BMC sells potable water at Rs 4.8 per 1,000 litres, the cost of water used during such times of emergency comes up to around Rs 5 lakh, which is a total waste of money and water. “Presently the BMC has no mechanism of recovering the cost incurred by the civic body for such disaster management operations, especially when negligence on part of the owner is the cause of the disaster,” sources said.
