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The fire at Hotel Arpit Palace claimed 17 lives and left scores with burn injuries, but apart from devastating many lives associated with those 17 and leaving many others with burn marks to live with forever, the accidents puts many questions before India as a nation and Delhi in particular.
Months ago, another fire tragedy had left 14 people in Kamla Mills area in Mumbai and it left several questions unanswered.
PTI
Apart from the absence of security clearances, inadequate infrastructure to deal with fire and the unsaid corruption in obtaining the NOC for facilities which shouldn’t be there in the first place from authorities, how come the cities like Mumbai and Delhi couldn’t save people from a fire in a 3 or 4-floor building. Don’t we have enough infrastructures in place to deal with fire?
It’s high time these questions need to be pondered upon.
Out of 2000 odd hotels, 250 violate fire safety norms
According to the Delhi Fire Service (DFS), Delhi has around 2,050 hotels and out of these, about 1540 meet the safety parameters and application of many of this number is under consideration. But roughly, 250 hotels are short on fire safety and they still continue to operate in the capital. The Indian Express report highlighted this.
Many hotels in the crowded areas like Pahad Ganj and Karol Bagh, the eateries operate on the terrace which again makes the building vulnerable to fire and the hotel in question, Hotel Arpit Palace had dining arrangement on the terrace. It has a fire No-Objection Certificate (NOC) for it.
The DFS data says 668 restaurants operating with NoCs and sanctions for 880s have been sought from the department.
Nursing homes flaunting rules
According to Indian Express report, nursing homes in the city are largely constructing violating fire safety norms and the majority of this nursing don’t comply to the basic and mandatory norms of an exit path which has to be at least 2 metre wide.
“Mostly, residential buildings are turned into nursing homes. Residential buildings need to have an exit width of one metre, while it is two metres in case of nursing homes,” a senior fire official was official was quoted by The Indian Express.
Fire accidents are quite frequent in the area
According to DFS records, the Hotel Arpit Palace kind of fires have been happening in Delhi, but mostly these fires which the department call medium category fires don’t cause this much of damage to life. The number of such fires in Delhi was 16 in 2013; 7 in 2014; 11 in 2015; 20 in 2016; and 24 in 2017. T
The serious category fire were 1, 2, 0, 6 and 4 in the corresponding years.
The tragedy of Sidhartha Hotel and Uphaar Cinema
Tuesday’s fire incident which took 17 lives wasn’t the first such accident which caused the number of deaths. The other major incidents are the fire at Sidhartha Hotel which took place in 1986 in which 44 people lost their lives.
PTI
The major fire accident of Uphaar Cinema in 1997 was one of the biggest fire accidents ever in India in which 59 people had lost their lives and over a hundred had suffered injuries.
In DFS, 51 percent for firemen are vacant
According to the current statistics, the city has 61 fire stations, but what is worrying as far as fire safety of Delhi is concerned, the department suffers from the scarcity of the staff and currently, 51 percent posts of firemen in DFS are vacant.
