A snack shop, Sessions Court and High Rise building in Mumbai have one thing in common – fire breakouts that has left many injured. In the last six months, Mumbai has witnessed 12 major fires and have reported 22 deaths. It is not just Mumbai, a slew of fire accidents across the country have claimed several human lives and damaged properties in the recent months.
A recent report by National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) states that 51 deaths are caused everyday by fire in the country. The report further states that residential buildings are more prone to catch fire over factories manufacturing combustible items. Another report by FICCI ranked fire as the fifth significant threat to business perceptions and operations in the country. A startling finding, both the reports and recent incidents have brought to forefront the importance of stringent fire safety norms in the industry.
With the demand for housing in India growing day by day, a greater need for safety norms is growing alongside. An upscale lifestyle apartment at a quaint neighborhood in close proximity to top-notch amenities is how everyone defines home-buying decisions in this fast paced digital era. While an increasing number of high-rise buildings match the description, one of the key aspects of any home is safety. An inherent component of safety feature in a residential complex is fire protection. In a high-rise building, salvaging operations becomes particularly difficult as most of them lack in-built fire protection systems and inadequate safety audits.
What are Fire Safety audits?
An effective tool to asses fire safety standards of a building are Fire Safety Audits (FSA), which help in measuring the compliance of a building’s fire safety norms against the conduct set by National Building Code of India. FSA predominantly measures both the standards on three key parameters – fire prevention, fire protection and life safety measures. Not just that, FSAs significantly help in identifying areas of improvement and evolve into action plans. A comprehensive fire safety audit should cover a plethora of aspects and review inherent fire hazard associated with everyday activities in a building. This can be an effective building maintenance policy that becomes an essential feature for fire prevention. One of the key aspects of Fire Safety audits is to create awareness among occupants and owners on fire safety features of the building and the maintenance of the same in accordance with the legislative requirements.
So how can residents and buyer be more aware of firefighting systems while purchasing a home?
One of the key offering by builders while building homes is to integrate fire-fighting systems in order to create a platform which will communicate the incident in real time. Besides this, a basic thumb rule for builders is to follow the dedicated safety norms put in place for special buildings (Low rise) and high-rise buildings (Multistoried buildings).
For Special buildings, builders have to consider providing at least basic firefighting systems like providing Fire extinguisher in common areas like all floor staircase and in electrical rooms. Smoke detectors in lift lobby, lift room and electrical room. Sufficient Sump storage has to be provided to mitigate fire during emergency. In high-rise building, Snorkel driveways must be free without any car parked or obstruction so that access to the building will be easy during emergency. During construction also fire general safety precautions has to be followed like identifying people most at risk and to be mitigated. It is always important to avoid covering of balcony in high-rise buildings.
Key challenges in Fire Safety integration
Water availability if one of persistent road blocks in integrating a fully functioning fire-fighting system. The scarce and unreliable availability of water in parts of the city will continue to be a threat for fire safety integration. Keeping this in mind, residents and builders have to build a dedicated sump of water for fire-fighting purposes. Another important challenge in fire protection system is maintenance. Some systems are difficult and intricate to maintain. Ignoring its testing and maintenance for an extended time questions the functionality of the product and is a threat to the human lives. If installing is important then maintaining is the key to systems effectiveness.
Fire protection should be considered as an integrated approach and the system thus designed for new building or installed, as part of renovation must be analyzed for its specific objectives. Looking beyond the basic functionalities of the system and analyzing it in conjunction with other components of the building, as a total package is a sign of well-developed and well-planned fire safety mechanism.
