No fire extinguisher, a single staircase: Violations in building

A fire official said, “We did not see any fire extinguisher, which should ideally have been placed on every floor… there was also only one entry on the front which also served as an exit, for at least 250 students taking classes inside the building at a time.”

Delhi Fire Services chief Atul Garg said while educational institutions such as schools and colleges require a No Objection Certificate (NOC), no such rule applies to coaching centres. “There are multiple criteria that define if a building requires a NOC to operate; one such criterion is if the building’s height exceeds 15 metres,” he explained. It is being ascertained if the Mukherjee Nagar building exceeded a height of 15 metres.

Garg also said he is not aware of a single coaching centre in Delhi that has applied for an NOC: “The government will now decide whether or not to monitor fire safety in coaching institutions.”

The Delhi government did not respond to queries regarding fire safety norms for coaching centres and if any inspections had been undertaken by it to assess the situation, especially after the fire in a coaching centre in Surat in 2019, wherein 22 students had died.

A fire official said there was only one common staircase for all three floors. “There should at least have been another exit somewhere in cases of such emergencies… a probe will be initiated against both the building owner and the coaching institutes,” said the official.

Moreover, each floor had four windows, all of them blocked by grills. An officer said, “Students had to break the grill first with a hammer to escape…”

While three coaching centres, two for civil services and one for SSC, were running in at least two floors of the building, the premises also had a few commercial firms. Said an officer, “The building has at least a dozen running ACs attached to it, which possibly led to overheating or overloading of the electricity meter due to the high temperature.”