Fire chief finds buildings with glass facades suffocating

Fire chief finds buildings with glass facades suffocating

The rising trend of buildings with glass facades has got the fire brigade concerned. According to fire officials, such buildings pose a grave threat because people can get trapped inside and suffocate to death. The fire brigade finds it tough to quickly evacuate people trapped in such buildings. The blaze on the fourth and fifth floors of the Mutha Chambers on Senapati Bapat Road on July 29, 2010, had taken hours to extinguish, despite 20 fire tenders having been pressed into action. Though 300 people were safely evacuated on that evening, the difficulties firemen faced in the operation came as an eye-opener for authorities.


Eye-opener: The July 29, 2010, Mutha Chambers fire that opened the
eyes of the authorities to the problems of glass facades. File pic

Apt safety devices
Chief Fire Officer Prashant Ranpise said the need of the hour was to go in for safety devices that were compatible with the new type of construction to help prevent suffocation of people.u00a0 "The problem with glass fa ade buildings is very severe. Mutha Chambers at least had a three-feet-high brick wall, above which the glass facades were put, but nowadays there are buildings with full glass walls, making rescue difficult," he said.
"Some establishments have ventilators, but these are manually operated. We want these to be automatic, working whenever the smoke detector gets going. We appeal to establishments like malls and IT firms to install such devices, as it has been observed over and over that most people die of suffocation rather than burns."

New rules required
While the administration can not stop construction of buildings with glass facades, it can make automatic ventilators mandatory. "The National Building Code of 2005 does not mention glass fa ades. We are expecting revisions in the NBC and are look forward to having at least some measures like automatic ventilators made mandatory," Ranpise said.

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