With the fire accident that occurred at Khairane MIDC on Friday evening, the fire-safety lapses in the area have been exposed.
According to the staff of MIDC fire stations, they are not well equipped to handle such situations, especially due to non-availability of fire-fighting equipment.
According to Thane Belapur Industrial Association (TBIA), there are around 3,000 companies in the MIDC, of which 600 are large companies and 2,400 are small ones. Some of these are also chemical units handling combustible substances.
There are a total of four fire stations in the MIDC area of TBIA.
“The fire station at Khairane is in bad shape. MIDC and TBIA that manage the stations are always putting the blame on each other. There was not enough foam that was required to douse the fire in the chemical industry on Friday and it had to be arranged from outside. This incident is a lesson that MIDC and TBIA both need to have required equipment to handle such a situation,” said former mayor, Sudhakar Sonawane, who visited the spot on Friday.
Fire operator Abhaykant Mishra of Khairane MIDC, who has been in service for the last 25 years, told Hindustan Times that one of the fire tenders of Khairane MIDC fire station is under repair for the last five years and another one, along with an ambulance, is under repair for the last two months.
“Letters have been written to ministers, State Government, MIDC and even Navi Mumbai municipal commissioner mentioning the non-availability of the fire fighting equipment at Khairane MIDC but none took cognisance. The Khairane fire station is just five minutes away from the company where the accident occurred, yet the staff could do nothing as they had no equipment with which they could fight the fire. I had received a call from the area informing me that the fire tenders reached after close to an hour. If only the Khairane fire station was well equipped, it could probably have contained the fire from spreading further,” Mishra said.
When asked about the lapse in Khairane MIDC, Santosh Warick, chief fire officer and fire advisor of MIDC Fire Services, said, “I am not aware of any such lapses.”
Former corporator Shashikant Bhoir had written the last letter on March 3, 2022 to the government mentioning about the lapses in the MIDC fire station and unavailability of fire tenders, a copy of which is with Hindustan Times.
“I have been writing for many years telling the government to ask MIDC and TBIA to hand over the fire stations to Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation. During the tenure of Vilasrao Deshmukh and Ashok Chavan as Chief Ministers, the decision was made as well but nothing happened after that,” Bhoir said.
Meanwhile, Bipin Shah of TBIA negated the claim of the fire tender being unavailable for months and said, “It was just a matter of two to three days that the fire tender was away for repair. It was to reach on Saturday and the incident occurred on Friday. Even if the tenders were available, they would not have been of much help as those were water tankers and for fighting the chemical fire, we needed foam tenders. We used as many foam tenders as were available and the fire was exhausted. More was arranged from other bigger companies. There are four fire stations on Thane-Belapur Road and after the call, tenders from three stations reached within 30 minutes and not beyond that.”