Death of four of its senior officials makes 2015 the worst year in the history of the 128-yr-old Mumbai Fire Brigade. On Tuesday, the seven-member panel probing the May 9 Kalbadevi fire episode submitted a 26-page report to Municipal Commissioner Ajoy Mehta. Some of the major recommendations of the panel include a new and modified standard-operating procedure to be created in the next three months, a grievance redressal system to address the problems concerning firemen and appointment of Incident Commander at the time of such untoward incidents. Tanushree Venkatraman & Srinath Rao on what the tragedy means. In a city of skyscrapers, soon to host India's tallest building, Gokul Nivas - all of four creaking storeys in South Mumbai's old, congested and busy Kalbadevi area - was easy to brush away. The dusty electric meter box that accounted for the various businesses running from the premises of the 60-year-old structure was located on the ground floor. When the fire in the meter box started at around 4.25 pm on May 9, the first to call the Mumbai Fire Brigade's control room were residents in nearby buildings. Even when the first alarm went out, the Byculla fire station, located around 5 km away, believed the blaze was not major and well under control. By the time the fire would finally be extinguished, it would be 1.30 am on May 10 - or nine hours after the fire brigade arrived. Eventually four senior officials would be left dead, including Byculla Station Officer Mahendra Desai and Assistant Divisional Fire Officer Sanjay Rane (who died the same day), Deputy Chief Fire officer Sudhir Amin (who sustained 80 per cent burn injuries and died 10 days after the incident) and Chief Fire Officer Sunil Nesrikar (who sustained 50 per cent burns and passed away on May 24). That made 2015 the worst year in the history of the 128-year-old Mumbai Fire Brigade, widely considered India's finest firefighting force. In five years before it, 2009 to 2014, it had lost three men in fire injuries. The survivors of the Kalbadevi fire say a complete recovery would be extremely difficult for the force. Some go as far as to say that it is impossible - two of those dead were among the first ever B.Sc graduates hired by the force. "The atmosphere in here has really changed, become mournful," a fireman at Byculla Fire Station says, his eyes on a framed portrait of Mahendra Desai. The story of Gokul Nivas If the deaths of so many officers in one fire was unprecedented, the story of Gokul Nivas was depressingly familiar. The building, now collapsed, is believed to have housed at least two illegal garment shops on its first and second floors. The fire brigade control room got a call at 4.29 pm but the fire engines from Kalbadevi could not reach on time because of the narrow lanes in which the building was situated. Illegal parking on the nearby roads also delayed the rescue operations. Police officials had to reportedly seek the help of locals to remove bikes haphazardly in the lane. Scores of handcarts choking lanes and blocking access to Gokul Nivas had to be moved away for the fire engines to enter. The narrow lanes only permitted two fire engines to operate at a time, officials said. As the blaze spread through the wooden staircase inside the structure, the fire brigade rescued three people residing on the fourth floor by gaining access through the nearby building. “Since the buildings were built very close, we connected a ladder from the other building and rescued the three people,” a fire official said. The area could be flood-lit only around 8 pm and prior to that, the firemen had to use motorcycle headlamps to guide them. Before the building came crashing down, Nesrikar was on the ground floor when some burning debris fell on his face. Amin, trapped in some rubble when the building showed signs of collapsing, was pulled out minutes before the structure collapsed. The fire swept deceptively quickly through the wooden staircase and combustible material such as fabric, batteries and chemicals stored in the building in bulk quantities. Gokul Nivas did not have any firefighting mechanism in place either – active (smoke detectors, alarms, riser systems, sprinkler system, functional hose-reels and a water tank) or passive (escape routes, fire lifts, fire exits, refuge area and provision of space around the building). Some portions of the building began caving in by 6.45 pm, a part of the structure minutes later and the building finally gave in and crumbled like a pack of cards by 10.30 pm. Unable to control the crowds gathered around the building, the police had to reportedly also cordon off the area around the structure by around 9.30 pm. Apart from this, the seven-member panel appointed by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to probe the fire is looking at "judgmental errors" on part of the senior officials, who were seen standing in the porch of the crumbling structure when it collapsed altogether. While the standard operating procedure mandates that the senior officials form an incident command center near the spot to man the entire process, the presence of four senior officials near the porch still remains a burning question. While some say that the seniors were not sure if there were more people trapped inside the blaze, some say that the seniors were eager to douse the blaze inside the building, which they feared might spread to the other crumbling structures in the vicinity. “This is what happens when there is no disaster management plan for any building. The fire brigade does not even know the head count or the number of people living inside the building. How are they then supposed to carry out the rescue operation successfully?,” a senior disaster management official questioned. When the fire broke out "CFO la maar lagle (CFO is hurt)! Brigade Call! Brigade Call!" a fire officer had screamed in his wireless handset soon after, sending panic through the fire brigade control room, located at the Byculla station. "We called fire stations at Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, Bhabha Atomic Research Center and in Navi Mumbai, Bhiwandi and Kalyan, to immediately send their resources to Kalbadevi," a control room officer says. He chafes at the criticism that they may not have reacted fast enough to their seniors being injured. "We see people getting injured and killed day in, day out. That is our job," the officer lashes out. An officer responding to a fire must assess the gravity of the blaze and classify it within seconds - Grade 1, Grade 2 or a brigade call, in increasing order of intensity. Based on that, the Mumbai Fire Brigade control room begins mobilising resources. The Gokul Nivas fire was classified as Grade 2 by the first responders. So, in the first round, eight fire engines, four water tankers and two ambulances were rushed there. This would go up to 17 fire engines, eight jumbo tankers, three ambulances, two rescue vans and one Breathing Apparatus van. There were seven of them manning the control room that day, says an officer. And they had other fires to tackle. "There were fire calls in Vile Parle and Dahisar too. With just 10 per cent of the resources left after sending every man and machine to Kalbadevi, the biggest challenge was the utilisation of these at appropriate places," the officer says. The situation was not dissimilar to the night of the terror attack on November 26, 2008, he adds. With the bulk of the force scattered across the Taj Mahal Palace and Hotel in Colaba, the Oberoi Hotel in Nariman Point, and tackling the bomb explosions in taxis in Vile Parle and Dockyard Road, the fire brigade struggled to tackle non-terror related fires. "There were four other fires in the city that night. We could not ignore them," the officer says. Prior to Gokul Nivas, the force had last received a brigade call (indicating the most serious of fire incidents) in July 2014, while battling a huge blaze in a glass-fronted skyscraper in Andheri (West) called Lotus Business Park. The building housed among others the offices of director Rakesh Roshan and his actor son Hrithik Roshan. The fire brigade had to call in a Navy helicopter to help tame the flames that day. The 21st and 22nd floors of the building were gutted and fireman Nitin Ivalekar lost his life. The firefighters Deputy Chief Fire Officer Kailash Hiwrale was part of the first batch of B.Sc graduates who joined the service in 1989 after training for six months, along with Chief Fire Officer Sunil Nesrikar and Deputy Chief Sudhir Amin, now both dead. Since 1988, firemen are required to be B.Sc Chemistry graduates, as they are expected to have enough knowledge on the subject for it to come handy in times of fire. Prior to that, the criteria was only passing the 12th grade. Unable to hide his emotions, Hiwrale turns around to wipe his eyes as he talks about Amin's booming laugh. At the fire brigade's regional command center in Wadala, Amin's cabin, next to Hiwrale's, is empty. "People at the fire brigade ask me about the force's state after the incident. How do you feel after you have lost a family member? The recovery is not going to be easy." Fire officers also expect their paranoia to rise. One fire officer says he recently scolded his wife for placing a plastic object next to a light bulb in a shrine at their home. "The heat from the bulb could have melted the plastic and led to a fire," he says. Another officer found himself unable to go to work after he found a gas cylinder leaking at home. "I had woken up at 5 am to report for the 7 am shift. I went into the kitchen to make tea, but after switching on the stove, heard a whistling sound and could smell gas. So I switched off the stove, but neither the smell nor the sound would go," he says. Their families are equally on tenterhooks, the firemen say. An officer who battled the Lotus Business Park fire leaves his cellphone behind before entering a burning building. "Two of my phones were destroyed in the past when I went into a fire with them," he says. However, every time he comes out, he has had a flood of calls, even from distant relatives, watching the fire on television. Deceased officer Mahendra Desai's wife Mansi recalls instances throughout her husband's career when he had to rush to rescues at untimely hours. "Their personal life goes for a toss," she says. Heroism during 2008 Mumbai attack While Kalbadevi is set to go down among the Mumbai Fire Brigade's most referenced disasters, the most commonly referenced and reminisced tragedy among its men is the November 2008 terror attack, in particular the massive effort to extinguish flames licking at the Taj Mahal Hotel. "A bunch of us had climbed up the hydraulic ladders to the first floor and were directing jets of pressurised water at the the burning dome, which was four storeys above us. All around, we could hear bullets being fired. Though a few National Security Guard commandos had secured us from the ground, up on the ladder, we were completely exposed. To this day, I still wonder why the terrorists did not shoot at us," an officer part of that operation wonders. Perhaps all they saw were a few brave firemen fighting the elements. That time-worn image is not likely to change - even after Kalbadevi.
