Thursday’s fire at Mantralaya has brought to the fore several deficiencies in the fire fighting system of government offices across the city. Of these, the BMC headquarters near CST is worst affected, officials have claimed.
According to corporators, the civic headquarters needs an urgent overhaul of its machinery, to avoid a Mantralaya-like disaster in the near future. With several glaring shortcomings like dysfunctional fire hydrants, expired fire extinguishers, malfunctioning smoke detectors, the 127-year old heritage structure of the BMC headquarters is sitting on a live volcano, officials claimed.
Further, a quick glance of the headquarters reve-als uncovered electrical wires, broken furniture and heaps of files casually stashed all over the place, making it more susceptible to a fire threat.
“In 1998, there was fire in the BMC building. Following this, the civic administration decided to take several corrective measures to improve the fire-fighting system at its headquarters. However, many of them just remained on paper,” MNS group leader Dilip Lande claimed.
Everyday, around 10,000 people including political leaders, celebrities and dignitaries, visit the civic headquarters. The inadequacies in its fire control system may put their lives at risk, Mr Lande said.
In a related development, mayor Sunil Prabhu called for immediate meeting of fire brigade officials on Friday, to examine the current fire system in place at the civic headquarters. Mr Prabhu said, “I have asked fire officials to carry out a fire audit of all civic buildings and implement stringent fire safety measures at the earliest.” However, Suhas Joshi, chief fire officer of the Mumbai Fire Brigade said, “The fire system in the BMC headquarters is checked every Sunday. Mock drills are also being held regularly to correct any faults.”