Delhi slums: An instant recipe for disaster

They attribute the increasing incidents of fire in slums to materials used in constructing hutments,storage of combustible waste and a web of electric wires passing through slums resulting in short-circuits.

Add to it,lack of communication facilities to inform fire brigade about any incident on time and the narrow lanes to reach inside the slums. It serves as an “instant recipe” for disaster,warn fire fighters.

“Fire in slums are caused mainly due to the present extreme heat conditions that makes the material with which the huts are made more combustible and short-circuits in electric wires,” R C Sharma,Director of Delhi Fire Services,said.

“Also,the material with which the hutments are made produce toxic gases when it catches fire,” he said.

On Sunday,one person was charred to death and two were injured when fire broke out in two slum clusters in the capital gutting 400 hutments.

Thirty people,including 21 children and four women,were injured in fire caused by a leaking gas cylinder at a tea shop in Shalimar Bagh last Tuesday. In another incident on the same day,175 slum dwellings were gutted in Shaheen Bagh.

There were at least seven major incidents of fire in slums across the capital this month.

Sharma said they have appealed to the government and civic bodies to ban commercial activities in slum clusters besides supplying power through underground cables and regulate electric installations in various premises.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has already made it clear that it will ensure there are no commercial activities in slum clusters.

The fire brigade’s other suggestions to reduce fire incidents in slums include relocation of slum clusters in a planned manner,use of non-combustible material for constructing huts and prohibition of use of plastic and PVC.

Sharma said the two decades experience of the city fire brigade has shown that lack of communication facilities in the nearly 1,100 slums was delaying fire fighting measures.

“By the time we reach a slum,hundreds of hutments are gutted mainly because of the type of material used for construction of hutments. Unsystematic layout also leads to entire area gutted in a very short span of time,” he said.

Ask about other difficulties faced by the fire brigade,he said,”As soon as the fire units reach the spot,they find a hostile crowd which start stone pelting,manhandling and damaging fire appliances as our response time was not to their requirement.”