Fire dept to send notice to Jeevan Sudha after blaze

Kolkata: The state Fire and Emergency Services department will send notice to the authorities of Jeevan Sudha where they have come across improper commissioning of the firefighting equipment. The decision comes in the wake of the firemen facing an uphill task to douse the blaze due to the non maintenance of important fire fighting gadgets on Thursday.

The Fire department has also decided to go for random checks in the high-rise corporate offices of the city to find out whether the firefighting equipment is properly commissioned or not.

"The fire originated from the 17th floor and the flames shot up to the 18th and 19th floor of the building.

In case of such fires on top floors in high rise building, the inbuilt firefighting system of the building comes as a great help for us. However, initially it did not function properly and we had to take the help of the system of a nearby building," a senior official of the Fire department said.

Elaborating on the system he said that it should be in such a condition that once there is smoke, the alarm should automatically start ringing and the sprinklers should start functioning mechanically. The building authorities should start the pump and start spraying water even before the Fire department steps in.

According to him, the lack of maintenance of this system led to fire spreading to the 14th and 15th floor and the firemen took time to extinguish the flames.

"Most of the buildings have a proper firefighting system but there is hardly any exercise. If the equipment lie in an idle condition for years it is obvious that it will not function in emergency. Our random check drive is likely to start from November," he added,

A major mishap was averted as Thursday was a holiday when a blaze broke out in Jeevan Sudha building.

The fire originated in a server room on the 17th floor, occupied by a nationalised bank , and travelled to the 18th and 19th floor through the AC duct.