The PMC commissioner said they will also be checking whether the societies have fire NOCs. (Source: File)
A day after the fire at a 14-storied building in Undri killed a teenage boy, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has decided to direct all residential housing societies within its jurisdiction to get their firefighting system in order or face action.
“We will send letters to all residential housing societies to ensure that their firefighting system is properly functioning,” Pune Municipal Commissioner Naval Kishore Ram told The Indian Express on Saturday.
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On Friday, Tarsh Kamal Khetan, 15, died due to suspected suffocation in a blaze on the 12th-floor apartment of Marvel Ideal residential society. Eight people, including two fire personnel, were injured in the incident. After the fire brigade officials reached the spot, they found that the firefighting system in the society was not functional.
The PMC commissioner said, “It is a sad incident. We have launched an investigation into the incident. If the firefighting system is not functioning, then we will take action against them. We will wait for the investigation report in the matter. If any societies are found at fault, then we will FIR against them.”
The PMC chief then said, “We are giving seven days to all residential societies within our jurisdiction to ensure that their firefighting system is in order.”
Ram said the PMC will soon launch a fire audit in housing societies, hotels and hospitals.
The PMC commissioner said they will also be checking whether the societies have fire NOCs. “If they don’t, then how were the flats made saleable?… We will take action in this respect as well,” the commissioner said.
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Devendra Potphode, Chief, PMC Fire Brigade, said, “The 15-year-old boy who died was alone at home. His mother had gone out. The flat door was closed. Our initial investigation reveals that there was a short circuit in the kitchen of the flat, which resulted in the fire. Because of the intensity of the heat, the cylinder must have gotten heated… As soon as our people entered the flat by breaking the flat door, the cylinder exploded. The cylinder was probably near the kitchen wall. Two of our firemen were injured. One firefighter got a minor burn while the other suffered 4 per cent burns. The society chairman, who was actively involved in the rescue operation, has also suffered burns. We found the boy in the bedroom. It looks like the boy fell unconscious because of the smoke that filled the flat.”
Potphode further said, “The society has eight wings. I think the society has more than 500 flats. They have a good firefighting system in place… But unfortunately, we have no clue as to why the firefighting system was not functioning. We are investigating the matter, especially as to how long the fire system was not working. We will find out whether the firefighting system in all wings or in this particular F wing was not working.”
The Fire Brigade chief said, “We have been telling the residential societies that the firefighting system is for the good of their own people. They should ensure their firefighting system is working properly. In this case, if the system had been working properly, the death could have been avoided. The fire duct, in this case, was close to the flat where the blaze erupted… The Fire Brigade system responded quickly and controlled the fire within that particular flat in no time. We stopped it from spreading to other flats. The societies should remain alive and alert to the dangers of a fire. We are always there to train society members on how to handle the fire equipment.”
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
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