City Pulse

Mumbai, Maharashtra: After a blaze which gutted two restopubs — 1Above and Mojo Bistro, on the Kamala Mills Compound in Mumbai, which killed 14 people and left many others injured on December 29 last year, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) went into damage control mode, suspending officials, inspecting eateries, and demolishing around 3,729 establishments. In fact, Mumbai saw as many as five fires in 20 days from December 29 to January 8. However, the Maharashtra Fire Prevention and Life Safety Measures Act, hasn’t been implemented thoroughly yet.

The act mandates every residential and commercial building to conduct a fire safety audit twice a year on its own and submit a compliance report to the nearest fire station, failure to do, can result in rigorous imprisonment up to three years, or a fine between Rs 20,000 to Rs 50,000. The act also has provisions for installation and regular checks of basic fire fighting systems including compulsory fire extinguishers, automatic sprinklers, and underground static water storage tank. However, these norms were openly flouted by 1Above, the rooftop restaurant where the bodies of all 14 people killed in the fire were found. Several other restopubs and restaurants on the Kamala Mills Compound were found to have breached fire safety norms.

A day after the mishap, social activist Mangesh Kalaskar, who had complained several times to the BMC about illegal construction on the mills compound, said the civic authority had turned a blind eye to his complaints. He said, “I repeatedly approached the BMC officials and complained about illegal constructions at Kamala Mills, but I was told there was no wrongdoing or illegal alterations.”

RTI activist Vihar Durve said he’s filed several RTI applications since the inspection of the fire safety act in 2006 seeking a reply on the status of implementation of the law. “Fire safety norms are breached in the city by many institutes including restaurants, and they get away with it without facing any consequences. There is lack of will to implement the act,” he said.

A 2015 audit report on urban local bodies in Maharashtra by the Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) found “a number of deficiencies in enforcement of the fire safety norms provided for, in the Act.” It also highlighted discrepancies in granting of provisional no objection certificates (NOCs) to any building or hazardous business activities such as petrol pumps, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) refilling stations or distribution centres, firecracker shops, and sawmills. The CAG report suggested that the state government enforce the act “more effectively to ensure that all hazardous business, commercial, government and institutional buildings were complying with the fire safety regulations and that they were self-sufficient in fire-fighting capabilities.”

Durve said he has written to all the authorities, including chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and even visited the fire department office in Wadala. However, no action has been taken yet on the CAG report.

Even in 2016, the CAG report echoed similar concerns. Pointing towards the massive blaze at the Deonar dumping ground on February 14 that year, the report said that “none of the fire safety measures were installed at the dumping ground.” “Infrastructure at the landfill/dumping site in terms of fire-fighting equipment etc was inadequate,” it added.

Apart from dumping yards, commercial, and residential buildings, government buildings, too, have failed to adhere to fire safety norms. The 2015 CAG report had found that 28 old government buildings under the jurisdiction of Aurangabad, Nagpur, and Amravati municipal corporations were not granted final fire NOCs by the respective fire departments as the required fire-fighting equipment were not installed in these buildings.

The report also punched holes in the fire department’s preparedness to tackle the increasing incidents of fire in Mumbai. It concluded that there is an acute shortage of fire stations in the state. Existing fire stations are grossly under-equipped and deficient in basic infrastructure and fire departments don’t have enough personnel. The Mumbai fire brigade has 33 fire stations, 2,500 personnel and 200 officers.