Non-functional walkie-talkies, narrow lanes, panicky public add on to a firefighter’s woes
BY Kanika Mehta30 April 2016 5:05 AM IST
Kanika Mehta30 April 2016 5:05 AM IST
"Problems like crowd management, communication issues like walkie-talkies not working during a blaze and reaching the buildings through congested and narrow lanes hamper our work,” said a senior Delhi Fire Services (DFS) official. Two days after the National Museum of Natural History was gutted in flames in the wee hours of Tuesday, senior officials of the Delhi Fire Services listed out the challenges faced by their men apart from the shortage of staff and the huge number of calls received by them which keep them on their toes on a daily basis.
“One of the major problems faced by our firefighters is to reach the spot where the fire had broken out. In most cases, we have to pave our way through narrow approach roads where it becomes difficult for our vehicles to enter. In such cases, a 220-metre long pipe is used but then again it poses problems such as the force of water slows down. The second major problem faced by us is that during a serious fire (fires are divided into three categories, “small”, “medium” and “serious”) the walkie-talkies used by the fighters often stop working due to water which get into the devices,” said a senior DFS officer.
The officer said: “Imagine what would happen if the phones given to our men to make SOS calls stop working? It is a problem on which we are working on. These are progressive problems which continue to act as obstacles in our work.”
Talking about another problem that at times pose serious life threats to the firefighters trying to tame the fire is “Crowd Management”. The officer said: “In most of the cases, it becomes so difficult to explain the people to let us do our job. Since it is a panicky situation, people keep coming in between the rescue operations. It is not the fire which is difficult to control but also the flying tempers of the people which acts as a big deterrent to our job,” added the officer.
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