Now Reading: 80% of Delhi unplanned, fire preparedness only average: chief fire officer
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80% of Delhi unplanned, fire preparedness only average: chief fire officer
80% of Delhi unplanned, fire preparedness only average: chief fire officer
Delhi Fire Service chief officer Atul Garg has said that around 80% of the capital is unplanned and that the city's fire preparedness is only average, not up to the mark for a national capital. In an interview to The Hindu, he said only about 5% of buildings in Delhi have Occupancy Certificates, and that building by-laws introduced in 1957 and revised in 1983 and 2016 have been widely ignored, especially in over 1,000 unauthorised colonies.
Garg said Delhi has 71 fire stations against a requirement of 120, and only 2,500 firefighters against a need for more than 12,000. The department is expected to get 9,000 additional firefighters and 49 more stations over the next five years. He noted that of 36,000 calls attended in 2024-25, only 1% came from buildings that had Fire Safety Certificates, suggesting certified buildings remain largely safe. The government has approved in principle making sprinklers and fire detectors mandatory, which Garg said could cut fire deaths from around 100 a year to three or four.
Traffic and narrow lanes make the prescribed five-minute response time difficult. To address this, 24 Quick Response Vehicles are deployed and another 26 will be added soon. Garg also warned that modern homes with synthetic materials have reduced flashover time from 17, 18 minutes to just three-to-five minutes, making early detection systems critical.
Indian Opinion Analysis
Delhi's building crisis is decades deep. The first by-laws date to 1957, but successive governments have allowed rampant unauthorised construction to flourish, often for political gain, vote-bank politics has repeatedly thwarted demolition drives. The result is a city where perhaps 90% of buildings lack an Occupancy Certificate, meaning the fire department never even sees their plans. The real cost is measured in lives: roughly 100 fire deaths annually in Delhi, a figure that could drop to near zero if passive safety, staircases, evacuation routes, structural integrity, were enforced at the planning stage. The chief fire officer's call for mandatory sprinklers and detectors in all buildings is a direct challenge to the real estate lobby, which resists any measure that raises construction costs. The next test comes when the DDA finalises its by-law amendments, likely within months.
Source: thehindu.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above. Methodology and corrections.
