Vijayawada: AP to Introduce New Fire Safety Norms Based on Fire Load
The state fire services authorities are in the process of formulating the new norms so that establishments will comply with the norms.
Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh government would come up with new fire safety norms to ensure more compliance by the establishments based on their fire load.
The s government constituted an 11-member committee headed by the director general of state disaster response and fire services for this purpose. The director of fire services is member-convener.
The other members are: the additional director fire services (Admin), the additional director of fire services (North), a regional fire officer, a representative of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Central Building Research Institute from Roorkee, a representative of the Bureau of Indian Standards, a fire adviser from the directorate general of civil defence from the Union ministry of home affairs, a representative from the National Fire Service College in Nagpur, a representative from the School of Planning and Architecture at Vijayawada and Srinivasa Rao Valluri, founder director, Synergy India Consultants from Hyderabad.
Principal secretary to home, Kumar Vishwajeet, issued the GO on Tuesday constituting the committee to study and adopt global fire safety measures in AP under Deregulation Phase-II.
AP along with other states used to follow the National Building Code for fire safety norms. However, India rolled out Phase-II of its Compliance Reduction and Deregulation Initiative (Deregulation 2.0) in January to cut red tape and simplify rules across certain key economic and social sectors.
In this context, the state government has taken the initiative with ‘fire services’ falling under the ‘State List’ to formulate its own fire safety norms by simplifying some of these based on fire load so that there will be more compliance instead of evasion and subsequent penalisation.
The state fire services authorities are in the process of formulating the new norms so that establishments like hospitals, educational institutions, commercial establishments and small industrial units, which are having relatively low fire load, will be having fire safety norms based on practical requirements so that they will comply with the norms.
For instance, under the old norms, hospital buildings constructed in 100 or 200 square metres need to maintain a pump house on the ground floor or cellar to store water and use it during fire emergencies.
The new norms will review the old practice and may allow pumphouse to be placed on the terrace of the building along with all pipeline connectivity and fire safety equipment installed, so that, in a fire emergency, the fire can be put out.
Fire services additional director G. Srinivasulu said, “New fire safety norms will be formulated in such a way that certain norms will be relaxed. There will be a more pragmatic approach to ensure more compliance with fire safety by the establishments, bring down the number of fire mishaps and ensure safety to the people.”
IMA AP branch former president C. Srinivasa Raju said, “Compliance with fire safety norms should be applicable based on the fire risk factor in the hospitals .
Some hospitals will be in high rise buildings with more beds and use high-end scanning machines, air-conditioners and ICU. So, the norms should be stringent. But, those in less than 15 metres height with less than 20 beds with no major machines may be given some relief, with strict compliance with norms.”