Red beacon of fire safety audit

The devastating Goa nightclub fire, which claimed 25 lives, including three migrant workers from Assam, and the pre-dawn blaze at a commercial complex in Guwahati are wake-up calls on the fire safety audit of commercial establishments and public premises. The expansion of cities, with surging residential and floating populations, demands a proportional strengthening of fire and emergency services. Ironically, equipping fire and emergency services with adequate modern equipment and faster mobility continues to be low on the list of developmental priorities. The Assam Fire and Emergency Services (Amendment) Rules, 2025, notified in October, mandate that the owner or occupier or both of the building or premises, to whom the Fire Safety Certificate is issued, shall continuously maintain the installed firefighting system in active and good working condition throughout the occupancy of the building or premises, and the owner or occupier or both shall upload a duly filled and signed self-declaration in the designated online portal along with the Firefighting System Maintenance Report submitted by the Third Party Fire Safety Auditor. Ensuring transparency of the fire safety audit for all the occupants, including employees of business establishments and offices located in the building or premises, is essential to build awareness on fire prevention and to bring to the notice of the Fire and Emergency Services (F&ES) authorities if they notice any deviation from or discrepancy in the self-declaration or the audit report. Besides, it is essential on the part of the authorities to find out whether the owner or occupier of the building or premises had undertaken preventive measures and carried out maintenance work in accordance with the third-party safety audit. Fire prevention is a duty to be shared by everyone and is not a responsibility to be left solely to the owner or occupier of a building or premises. Business establishments and offices, by organizing periodic drives on fire safety awareness among employees, staff and security guards, can ensure that the last person to leave such commercial space or office premises after duty hours carries out essential checks to prevent any accidental outbreak of fire. Provision of a checklist on such essential checks developed with the guidance of the F&ES department can help the authorities of the establishments or offices to find out gaps in routine maintenance. Systemic improvement in fire safety awareness will bear fruit only when the F&ES department is fully equipped to bring a fire under control quickly and prevent it from spreading after it breaks out. The 15th Finance Commission recommended a provision of Rs 5,000 crore for expansion and modernisation of fire services in states. The Central Government launched a “Scheme for Expansion and Modernization of Fire Services in the States” in 2023 with the earmarked allocation. The scheme allows the states to undertake expansion of fire services by setting up new fire stations, strengthening state training centres and building the capacity of firefighters, volunteers and the community in fire prevention measures and modernization of fire services by procuring modern firefighting equipment like hydraulic platforms and turntable ladders and strengthening state headquarters and urban fire stations. The Finance Commission in its report highlighted that fire services in the country are ill-equipped to provide adequate fire safety cover to the population and found deficiencies to the tune of 97.54% in respect of fire stations, 80% in the case of firefighting and rescue vehicles, and 96% in the case of the availability of firefighting personnel. The figures point towards a widening gap between the fire safety preparedness and requirement which needs to be bridged in an accelerated manner to reduce vulnerabilities. Mobility of firefighting vehicles in a city like Guwahati, where traffic congestion has become a norm, not an exception, deserves more attention from city authorities so that the city builds capacity to quickly clear the routes to facilitate quick arrival of firefighting vehicles, equipment and personnel at the spot. Establishing more fire stations to reduce travel time in densely populated areas needs to be prioritized. The resilience of a fast-expanding city like Guwahati against fire emergencies is determined by the level of fire safety awareness among the residents. When residents are made aware of fire safety at the household level, they also carry the awareness and alertness to their workplaces and public places and play a responsible role in compliance of fire safety protocols. Displaying fire safety protocols in all commercial buildings and premises of offices prominently can be a good practice to remind people about fire prevention through observance of the protocols. Firefighting personnel struggling for long hours to control the fire at the multi-storey commercial building speaks volumes about the tougher challenges of firefighting in a fast vertically growing city without strengthening the firefighting capabilities of the F&ES department. The city urgently needs capacity building of its fire and emergency services proportionate to its rapid growth, along with a comprehensive fire safety audit.