DFS responded to over 13.5K calls; 686 rescued

new delhi: Since the beginning of this year, the Delhi Fire Services (DFS) has attended to more than 13,590 calls of incidents ranging from animal rescues, floods, wall collapse, cylinder blasts and of course fires, in which 125 people lost their lives while fire officials rescued over 680 people.

Significantly, one of the highest numbers of calls that the DFS attended to this year was in February, when they responded to a total of 2,196 calls. Delhi had seen one of the deadliest riots in decades in the last week of the month in the north-east district, which had killed over 53 and injured scores.

The data accessed by Millennium Post showed that DFS officials rescued 91 people in the entire month of February. The data available with the fire department recorded a total of 19 deaths in incidents such as the ones mentioned above. However, the maximum deaths this year were recorded in July - 24.

On July 19, heavy rains had brought chaos and floods in the city. Trees fell, traffic was affected and during such a situation, the DFS received three major water-logging related calls in which they saved 10 people from ITO, Jakhira flyover and Lawrence Road flyover. Around 10 houses in the slum area of Anna Nagar in Central Delhi had also collapsed.

The data showed that fire officials had rescued as many as 129 people in January, 115 in March, 61 in April, 148 in May, 55 in June and 87 in July. The corresponding deaths for these months stood at 23 in January, 13 in March, 14 in April, 10 in May and 22 in June.

A fire official said that they take all necessary precautions to protect themselves from the raging pandemic at any incident spot like fires or floods. He said they try to ensure that the public or residents do not come close to them. "Police are also there, who keep the public away from us whereas in flood-like situations we take the help of ropes to rescue people and in an emergency case, we have to save lives, so through hands, properly gloved, we help trapped people," an official said.

DFS officials had saved 20 people from a fire reported in a three-story building in Gujranwala Town in May. "In May, hundreds of people were displaced after a fire raged through 250 shanties in the Tughlakabad area. The spot was congested and packed with combustible materials. Several people had gathered at the spot and we were telling them to maintain social distancing," a fire official said. One other official said firefighters received the maximum incident calls this year in May when they responded to 2,326 calls.

The data showed that DFS received 2,009 calls in January, 1,638 in March, 1,801 in April, 1,852 in June and 1,771 in July.

However, another fire official, comparing the data to last year's said, due to the lockdown, there was a decrease in the number of calls. "Due to the closure of factories, small units, fire calls have stopped," he said. According to data from last year, about 308 people died in various incidents like fire or road accidents, and 1,638 people were injured. A total of 31,157 calls were received by the fire department and about 32 medium and serious fire incidents were reported in Delhi in all of 2019.

DFS Director Atul Garg told Millennium Post that even at the time of a pandemic, the firefighters are sparing no efforts to rescue people. "We have provided our firefighters with all necessary equipment to save themselves from COVID-19 and also the equipment and firemen are sanitised after every rescue operation," he said.