Fire Disasters Issues & Measures

Fire safety operations in urban India often fall under municipalities, a tier of governance that is particularly weak. A consequence of it is that firefighting operations are starved of resources. India had only 39% of the 8,559 fire stations needed in 2018.

The issues involved are as follows:-

1. Urban Development

• Population Density

• Unregulated peri-urban & rural slums

• Closely spaced buildings -congestion.

• Urbanization-

2. Reactive Response

• Fire Engineering

• Fire Audit

• Capacity building

• Awareness- yet needed

3. Inadequate capacity

• Less number of fire brigades

• the low number of staff members

• Absence of water sources

• Building by-laws

• Coordination by agency

4. Climate Change

• Temperature change- Heating up of forests and agricultural pastures

• A frequent risk of heat waves

5. Modern days technological intervention

• Data Centres

• Multi-level park

• Metro rails

• Lithium batteries of EVs lead to early heating up of batteries and cause scooters to catch fire.

Way Forward:-

1. Fire prevention & Risk mitigation

• There must be a sync between building permission and fire regulation

• Less use of flammable materials such as Glass, Foam, and Plastic boards.

• Educating users on how to operate basic facilities

• Incorporating best practices

• Safety audits

• Frequent revision.

2. Relief from Disaster

• Fire stations

• Water storages

• Indicating funding - Private Public Partnerships

• Capacity building personnel

3. Technology

• Water Mist

• Accessing Drones

• Robots- which can do harmful manual work and replace firefighters

• Hand-held lasers.

4. Institutional Reforms

• Inter-agency coordination: Fire stations, Hospitals, centers, etc.

• Intra-agency co-operation

• Centre-state Mentions.

-A Blog by Jitisha Shashi Hiremath