Small godowns are fire traps

Hyderabad: Small godowns and commercial places are more vulnerable to fire accidents and likely to result in panic in residential areas where most of these are located, fire department officials say.

Although the vulnerability of fire accident is high, the department cannot do anything except advice the owners to adopt fire safety measures. “These godowns do not come under the jurisdiction of the fire department. Therefore, it cannot do much about the issue other than telling these godown owners to personally take care of their units,” said district fire officer K. Madhusudhan Rao.

On Thursday, there was a major accident at Vasanth hardware shop in which property loss was estimated at  Rs 35 lakh. In such cases officials suspect that the fire broke out as a result of short circuit.

“Since it was a paint shop, the flash point for paints will be very low and it easily catches fire. There will be higher chance of fire accidents in such situations,” said Mr Rao. Some causes of such fire accidents are faulty wiring or usage of low quality products.

Some products like petrol, paints, and others were characterised as low flash point products. These easily catch fire without any source of ignition. Materials such as paper and thermocol easily catch fire. 

It was a three-storied building where the hardware shop was on the ground and first floors. The owners of the building gave the second and third floor on rent. “In such cases they should have mixed occupancy certificate. The completion and occupation certificate have to be issued stating that the building has been constructed in accordance with the requirements of the National Building Code,” Mr Rao said.

Since the building was less than 15 metres in height, it didn’t come under fire department jurisdictionbut under the Municipal jurisdiction, said Mr Rao. 

H4