Despite the occurrence of frequent industrial and commercial fires in Mumbai, the civic body and the Mumbai Fire Brigade do not have a mechanism to keep a tab on illegal structures or legal ones that
Despite the occurrence of frequent industrial and commercial fires in Mumbai, the civic body and the Mumbai Fire Brigade do not have a mechanism to keep a tab on illegal structures or legal ones that do not comply with fire safety standards.
Even though the Fire Brigade inspects malls and large commercial establishments on a monthly basis, it lacks an exclusive method to track and deal with smaller shops or eateries or old residential buildings.
However, taking cognisance of the seriousness of the situation after frequent fires, the Fire Brigade has decided to carry out its drives more frequently, trying to cover as many localities as possible within the month-long period. It is also mulling roping in officials from the ward-level shops and establishments department of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), as it is in charge of tracking illegalities in construction of smaller commercial structures.
Fire Brigade sources said, “We carry out routine inspection drives in housing societies and in hotels and restaurants. We have even sent notices to malls and outlets of big brands, if they are found to be deviating even slightly from maintaining fire safety standards. We will now intensify these drives so that we cover more places within any given time.”
P. Rahangdale, chief fire officer of the Mumbai Fire Brigade, said, “Even though we will take more stringent measures to prevent such incidents from happening, the Fire Brigade can only conduct inspections and send notices where irregularities are found. We have already done that at the Raghuleela Mall in Kandivali, McDonalds in Bandra and Earth Castle Mall in Girgaon, among many others. We will carry on with these inspections.”
A series of recent fires in the city have occurred in structures that are either too old to be fire safety compliant or have propped up illegally. The fire that gutted a medical store haphazardly housed in a two-storey residential structure in a chawl in Andheri’s Juhu Galli took the lives of 11 people. The owner of Wafa medical stores had received a notice from the BMC just a week before the fire for irregularities in his shop.
Similarly, a fire at the illegal basement of City Kinara Hotel in Kurla last year claimed the lives of eight students from the Don Bosco Institute of Technology. Also, last May’s Kalbadevi fire, which took the lives of four officials from the fire brigade, and Colaba's Metro House fire — which occurred in June this year — gutted structures that had not adhered to fire safety standards.
