Faulty & cheap wiring blamed for fire accidents

Fire Prevention Wing moots grant of trade licence by the GHMC after a fire safety check to cut down on accidents.

The city has become prone to fire accidents----be it corporate offices like Pooja Edifice in Begumpet or government establishments like the Secretariat. The one thing that all of these fires have in common is the fact that its cause has been attributed to short circuits in the electrical system. Such an anomaly raises questions as to whether the electrical wiring was indeed faulty or that the officials chose to blame it on short circuit as a ready-made excuse.

P Venkata Ramana, additional director, Fire Prevention Wing (FPW), GHMC, says, “In all the post incident inspections that we have conducted recently, poor wiring was detected as the fault in all the cases. Sometimes poor wiring was bridled with an overload at the plug points. Usually in the corporate offices there are a lot of computers which are hooked onto one plug point using a spike buster or an extension cord. This in turn results in overloading the electrical circuits in the walls. Another aspect is that once the office is closed these plug points are still switched on. Slowly smoke would come out from the points and then flames would erupt. These flames then spread to any combustible material like paper, cardboard or thermocol (in case of false ceilings). That is when the fire breaks out.”

“The second most common form of fire hazards is gas leakages which occur generally in households. People do not want to spend on a proper gas hose. Instead they go for cheap brands which finally prove more expensive than what they had bargained for,” he added.

Since January 21, the Fire Prevention Wing has given out 646 Form 12 notifications to 648 buildings which includes schools, hospitals, function halls, hotels, commercial and residential buildings. Form 12 is basically a deficiency notice issued to notify the civic body that a particular building is ill-equipped to handle a fire accident. After Form 12, Form 14 is issued which basically substantiates that a particular building is in violation of fire safety measures. Till date, only 122 such notices have been issued under the Greater Hyderabad limits.” Venkata Ramana is livid that no stringent action is being taken with regard to fire safety. He has requested GHMC Commissioner Somesh Kumar to link property tax and trade licences to Fire NOCs.

“If someone wants to apply for a trade licence, he would have to go through a fire safety check by the officials. By doing so, many commercial businesses, small and big, would come under the FPW’s purview. But now, once the trade licence is issued, the businessmen cares a damn. It is only after a fire breaks out, do they gauge the gravity of the situation. I have tried to make a few amendments going by which all the commercial and residential buildings which pay property tax or acquire a trade licence must also go through a mandatory fire check and acquire the NOC,” he said.