On Feb 28, 2017, the President of Pakistan approved the Fire
Safety Provision, 2016 Building Code of Pakistan. The new building code --
jointly prepared by the Pakistan Engineering Council and the National Disaster
Management Authority -- envisages to ensure the installation of fire prevention
and control systems in all high-rise residential and commercial buildings in
the country. However, it is an open secret how much our public institutions
have been well enough to implement the ongoing fire safety bylaws but more
unfortunately when one looks at the governmental side, where fire rescue
service is municipally a local government affair and responsibility, there
seems very gloomy picture.
At a time when nearly all cities, including Karachi is in
state of emergency to confront terror threat and disaster-like situation, it's
inhabitants might not get quick response for rescue services from Karachi
Municipal Corporation's fire brigade department owing multifaceted problems
like water shortage, power outages and required expenses for fuel and
maintenance of tenders. The Fire Brigade Department of KMC is in deplorable
conditions with most of machineries are non-operational due to negligence of
higher authorities.
According to official reports, there are 22 to 26 Fire
Stations in Karachi in which more than half do not fit in the description of
Fire Station. Some are one-room offices
with a parking area for fire tender. Some run their affairs make-shift under-the=bridge
occupancy. Other are operated out of make-shift containers. While out of total
75 fire tenders only 45 are commutable or functional.
The department has four water browsers, large tankers to
hold up capacity of 30,000 gallon water. But as the contract of their drivers
is expired there is nobody to drive these heavy tankers so these browsers are
getting rusty day by day. Similarly, out
of four snorkel only one is functional, besides a single rescue vehicle which
is used for all kind of calamities in the city.
Furthermore, the Corporation doesn't have adequate quantity
of fire extinguisher foam to put out a fire in a single oil truck. Almost all
the fire stations do not have required fire extinguisher foam and even a few of
them have it, it is less than 100 cans. While, according to required standards each
fire station should have a thousand cans of fire extinguisher.
It is also important to mention that according to
international standards, there should be one fire station for every 0.1 million
people. This means that Karachi needs atleast 200 fully equipped fire stations
within it's vicinity. But the city as said above only have a dozen proper fire
stations. The international response time of fire tenders should not be more
than three minutes, but we all well aware fire tenders take a lot of time to
reach any emergency situation.
By
Editorial, Infocus
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