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: The massive oil depot fire that raged for days in Jaipur has dramatically but tragically illuminated the woefully inadequate fire service infrastructure in India. While conceding that the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) depot fire in Jaipur was prodigious by any standard, the routine fire accidents occur almost everyday reveal the institutional flaws in the entire fire protection capacity at a national level.
The subject of the Jaipur fire, its content and its power of devastation have been taken lightly; while investigations will unfold, in their own time, blame games will continue forever; the bottomline: a beautiful city completely polluted, precious lives of near and dear ones gone, besides the time and energy spent by Army, police, rescue missions, etc to try and salvage the situation. Say what you may, as a result of this incident, Rs 1,000 crore ($200 million went into flames.
Being a subject evoking a non-committal response from society and the state administration in particular, fire protection has over the years bred a state of apathy among most Indians. The increasingly execrable conditions under which the fire services (FS) of the country struggle to fork out minimum service today are stark but invisible.
The problem is that, unlike most Western countries, older installations are often not required to be upgraded to match the current standards, e.g. if you had bought a car 10 years ago, you are not (necessarily) required to retrofit it with the latest safety gadgets. The problem lies in defining ‘what is really necessary’, which should in turn be mandatory for a safety retrofit. But government authorities struggle with the ‘determination’ as all incumbents scream they cannot afford it. Personally, I believe that all oil facilities should always be upgraded if they pose a public hazard by proximity. Tanks inside IOC facilities sufficiently far away from other people could be allowed to burn out. This was not the case in Jaipur where car dealerships and factories in the vicinity were shattered by the sound of the blast.
Thus, the October 23 Cabinet clearance of ‘a scheme of the ministry of home affairs for strengthening fire and emergency services, to be implemented at an estimated cost of Rs 200 crore during the remaining Eleventh Five-Year Plan period’ is a much-delayed but welcome initiative. Within this scheme, fundamental issues like protection of life and property clearly need to be addressed. Recognising fire protection as a fundamental right would benefit...
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