A fire in a highrise building in Bandra West on Monday once again turned the spotlight on fire safety in plush societies in Mumbai, especially because they can afford to keep it functional and yet don’t. Some highrises (owing to their height) are not within the reach of the fire brigade equipment.
The internal fire-fighting system not functioning in such buildings is putting residents’ lives in danger.An observation that is made after every fire incident in highrises is that people spend lakhs of rupees on interiors but ignore fire and safety measures. In the last few months, the city has witnessed fires in some plush buildings that had defunct firefighting systems.
In wake of this growing tragic menace, the BMC is planning to make it mandatory through the Registrar of Societies to declare the status of the fire audit conducted by co-operative societies in their annual audit report. Moreover, an awareness campaign called ‘TAJ’ (Tayyari Aag se Jeetne ki) will be conducted for training fire safety measures for managing committee members of residential and commercial societies.
