Accident after accident, including the Jhansi fire, has shown that fire exits are too narrow — at times built only to tick a box — to evacuate people safely during an emergency. (Express photo by Vishal Srivastava)
Nov 17, 2024 18:43 IST First published on: Nov 17, 2024 at 20:38 IST
It’s heartbreaking that the lives of newborns are snuffed out in a facility that’s supposed to give life. Fire accidents in the country evoke a sense of terrible déjà vu. Almost every blaze that results in loss of lives and causes ineffable anguish to the families of the deceased and injured speaks a story of abdications. Like several similar incidents in recent years, the tragedy that claimed the lives of 10 babies at a Jhansi hospital on Friday night is a reminder of the shockingly low priority accorded to safety in Indian cities.
The hospital was reportedly operating beyond capacity. Designed to accommodate 18 newborns, the facility had 49 such babies at the time of the incident. The hospital authorities have claimed that the healthcare centre was equipped with firefighting devices. The flames, which began with a spark in an electrical unit, seemed to have been fanned by medical equipment – oxygen cylinders, for example – in the facility. It’s no rocket science that fire safety arrangements in medical facilities should account for the combustibility of oxygen cylinders — it can cause other materials to ignite easily and burn rapidly; chemicals and other patient care items can cause fire. Yet accident after accident is proof that buildings continue to be tinder boxes because the basics are given short shrift, and the necessary precautions are not taken.
It takes a tragedy
The National Building Code lays down extensive directions for avoiding fire mishaps. Most states too have their fire safety guidelines. Protocols require all hospitals to undertake risk assessment exercises, conduct fire management and evacuation drills and provide oxygen safety training to all staff. Healthcare professionals from doctors and nurses to ward attendants should be made aware of the potential risks of oxygen combustion and trained to handle equipment carefully. However, there is scarcely any supervision of fire safety protocol adherence. Fire safety operations fall under municipalities, a tier of governance whose weaknesses have multiplied in recent times.
Inspections are weak and, at best, once-in-a-few-years exercises. It takes a tragedy to uncover violations – whether that be the AMRI hospital inferno in 2011, the blaze in a private hospital in Delhi in May this year or the tragedy that led to the death of 10 babies in 2021 at a healthcare centre, about 60 km from Nagpur, or the several other hospital fires during the pandemic.
Police outside the NICU ward of the hospital in Jhansi. (Express photo by Vishal Srivastav)
Accident after accident, including the Jhansi fire, has shown that fire exits are too narrow — at times built only to tick a box — to evacuate people safely during an emergency. Fire safety protocols also require hospitals to build dedicated staircases with a larger width to facilitate the easy evacuation of patients on stretchers during a rescue. They call for rational use of oxygen and demand that cylinders should be turned off when not in use. Electrical equipment, which are not in use, should be switched off so that a stray spark does not lead to a fire in the oxygen-enriched environment. Yet, a blaze every few months at a healthcare facility underscores that these rules are followed only in breach. Investigations arrive at similar conclusions. But no lessons are learnt.
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Short-circuiting safety
National Crime Records Bureau data is testimony that fire safety is, at best, an afterthought in building planning in India. In the past five years, nearly 3,500 fire incidents have been reported from the country with electrical short circuits being a predominant cause. More than 6,000 lives have been snuffed out since 2019 because of the lack of priority accorded to fireproofing in the construction of buildings.
In 2020, the National Institute of Disaster Management report, ‘Fires in India: Learning Lessons for Urban Safety (2020)’, underlined that, “The apathy of the authorities in taking any action has clearly indicated that little has been learnt from the previous fire outbreaks.” Four years later, the Jhansi tragedy is proof of the continuing apathy and disrespect for the sanctity of human life.
Till next time.
Stay well,
Kaushik Das Gupta
