Fire hazards galore at Mumbai skyscrapers

Raksha Shetty , CNN-IBN
Posted on Mar 02, 2010 at 16:31 | Updated Mar 02, 2010 at 17:04

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Mumbai: With under-equipped fire stations, residents are now left to their own devices if tragedy strikes. Maximum city Mumbai is India's tallest story with the highest number of highrises in the country.

The higher you go the better the view. But as we found out, if there's a fire, you might just be better off with your feet firmly on the ground.

Of the fire department's 14 aerial ladders, only one can go over the 15th floor. If you live up here, and there's hundreds of thousands of people who do in Mumbai, you're at the mercy of your own building's firefighting equipment.

Add to that, blatant flouting of building norms, and no wonder that highrise residents are a worried lot.

"The BMC requires a minimum of 12 feet between two towers but as you can see there is hardly any space and if one of the buildings catches fire then within no time it will spread to the next," said a citizen journalist Indira Chajed.

The bad news doesn't end there. An RTI application has found that Mumbai needs at least 100 fire stations, owing to its sheer size, but has only 33. And of the 8000 fire hydrants in the city, 4,900 are non functional.

All kinds of buildings whether they are residential or commercial, the BMC has relaxed its norms completely under pressure from builders, said an activist Krishna Raj Rao.

The fire department admits regulations need to be reviewed, but says highrise builders and residents need to monitor their own fire safety carefully.

"After a certain height you can't do much external firefighting and it has to be done internally. So, I want to appeal to everyone to be careful and cautious," said Chief Fire Officer Uday Tatkare.

As Mumbai's skyscrapers climb higher with even 60-storey towers under construction, in-built fire safety and the city's fire-fighting infrastructure will have to work hard to keep up.

More on: Mumbai towers, fire safety norms, highrise building