Still 80% highrises without proper fire safety provisions

SURAT: Fire & emergency services department of Surat Municipal Corporation has been running a campaign for the past seven months, yet this has led to only 20 per cent of fire safety compliance in the residential buildings of the city.
Surat suffered its worst fire incident of last 30 years on May 24, 2019 when 22 young persons lost their lives in the fire that broke out in Takshashila.Fire & emergency services department then started a campaign to ensure compliance of fire safety regulations in commercial, educational and residential buildings.
Fire department conducted a survey of residential buildings which were 15 metres tall. Urban development department data shows that nearly 80 per cent of the total of 1,200 hig-rise buildings in the city built around 2006 lacked proper fire safety measures.
Basant Parikh, chief fire officer, said, “We conducted the survey after taking data from the department concerned. We saw that at the time of obtaining building use certificate (BUC), owners of these buildings had set up required fire safety equipment but most failed to maintain it. Today we have a situation where nearly 80 per cent of highrise buildings are without proper fire safety provisions. If a fire mishap occurs in any of them, people will be stranded.”
At present, the city boasts of 2,100 highrise buildings above 15 metres of height, including those built around 2006. Majority of these buildings have some sort of fire safety equipment, but they are not fit to be used during an emergency.
“Stringent fines must be imposed for not keeping the fire system updated. BUC must be given only after it has been ensured that the fire safety equipment has installed in a building and it is usable,” Parikh added.