‘Didn’t know it was a factory, could have saved lives’
WRONG INFO Fire dept says caller told them fire was at a house, weren’t equipped with necessary equipment to deal with industrial fire
NEW DELHI: At 5.22am Sunday, when the Delhi Fire Services control room received a call reporting a fire at a house in north Delhi’s Anaj Mandi, it seemed like one of their usual distress calls.
As a drill, four fire tenders were sent to the spot to contain the fire, not expecting it to be a five-storeyed building with 63 labourers trapped inside. By the time backup arrived around 6.15 am, the death toll was already 11.
Delhi Fire Services director Atul Garg said they believed the toll would have been much less had they been told it was a multistoreyed factory with people inside.
“Then, instead of four fire tenders rushed initially, we could have at least sent eight to 10 of them, he said.
“With 10 fire tenders, more water with us and more manpower, we could have at least not allowed the fire to spread to the upper floors of the building where most of the casualties occurred. It would have given us some time till more backup arrived,” he said.
The fire chief said because of the wrong information, the first set of firefighters that reached the spot had not expected it to be an industrial fire.
“Drills for a house fire and an industrial fire are totally different. Prepared to handle a house fire, they were not carrying essential tools such as foam tenders used to douse chemical fires, metal cutters to cut open metal doors or grilles usually found in factories and breathing apparatus that helps our men breath amid dense, poisonous smoke,” Garg said.
DESPITE LACKING ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT, FIREFIGHTERS WHO GOT THEIR FIRST MANAGED TO PULL OUT THE FIRST MAN ALIVE WITHIN 10 MINUTES
The director said they were missing the hydraulic spreader used in such cases to drill hole in the wall and then broaden it using hydraulic pressure so that occupants can crawl out or jump in case they are trapped.
However, he added, despite lacking essential equipment, the firefighters who had arrived first managed to pull out the first man alive from the building within 10 minutes of their arrival.
“Our men arrived at 5.25 am, within three minutes of the call, from the nearest fire station at Rani Jhansi Road,” he said.
An official involved in the rescue operation said when the first team arrived at the spot, the only available exit was a shutter that was only partially open. With smoke from the blaze filling the building, it would have been difficult for the occupants to have reached this exit.
“Mostly those who managed to escape were people from the terrace who jumped across to adjacent buildings,” the official said.
On Sunday, the firefighting exercise, which started at 5.25 am, continued for about fourand-a-half hours. There were 43 casualties. 20 occupants of the building were rescued, 16 of which required hospitalisation.
At 9.58 am, the last charred body of a male occupant was taken out. Cooling operations concluded by 10.30 am, making way for the police and forensic experts to walk in to begin investigations.