Fire accidents will continue to recur

Fire accidents are not new. However, the yet another major fire witnessed on Wednesday which claimed 11 lives is not going to be the last one either. It may sound like a sadist viewpoint but that is a fact. Very recently, we have seen similar fire accidents in some hospitals in Hyderabad including the recent one at Gandhi Hospital, in furniture shops, fire and resultant blasts in chemical units and Shiva Parvathi theatre in the city.

Once an accident takes place, the entire media, the police, the fire brigade, the Home Minister, city leaders and ministers and even the Chief Minister would say that they would take all necessary measures to see that such incidents do not recur. The fire department will conduct some survey and issue notices to some people.

Once the smoke settles down, everyone would be back to their work and preventive measures are never taken up. Pay compensation and wash off hands is the general norm. And incidents continue to happen.

If the administration could not implement the Supreme Court order of 2012 imposing total ban on use of black film in four wheelers of all vehicles throughout the country, how can we expect strict measures to prevent fire accidents in commercial establishments?

Most of the vehicles (fifty percent of vehicles on road) still have black films and majority of them belong to high and mighty and politicians, film personalities etc using SUVs and high-end vehicles. Exemption for use of black films was given only for certain high-risk categories like President, Prime Minister, Chief Ministers, Governors etc. But even Chairmen of corporations and public representatives have not removed the black film and police turns a blind eye.

Similarly, when it comes to implementing fire safety norms, the rule says that fire officials should have list of commercial establishments and those which are fire prone and they are supposed to check whether such buildings have NOC from fire services or not.

In case of those who have NOC, their validity needs to be checked and the officials should ensure that they renew the NOC or close the establishment. But no such strict measures are taken for reasons known to all of us. To put it bluntly: Corruption.

The government may claim that they have established a system which has rooted out corruption. But it is not so because the intentions of government are not put into action by those who are supposed to implement it.

Unless the administration shows grit and acts tough it would be impossible to bring down the number of such major fire and other accidents and we would end up mourning the death of those who lost their lives, announce ex-gratia and get busy in politicking.