Legislators home violates fire safety norms

BANGALORE: Will the Government agencies take action against itself when they violate fire safety norms? The Legislators’ Home is a classic  example where the Government has violated fire safety rules. The public works department has converted the pushback area (space where no inflammable items are kept to break the spread of fire between buildings in case of a fire) of the building into a parking lot and has constructed a shelter. Ironically, the parking space is reserved for vehicles of Legislative Council members. “We have nothing to do with the construction of the parking shelter. We followed the higher officials’ instructions and constructed the shelter,” said an official of the Public Works Department (PWD).The asbestos-shelter, supported by steel girders, occupy most of the vacant space behind the Legislators’ Home. It will be a daunting task for fire tenders to use this space during emergencies. A quick scan of the building reveals that the corridors of Legislators’ Home have either outdated fire extinguishers or no fire extinguishers at all. “We had a meeting with Fire and Emergency Services officials recently. They brought the violations to our notice. We have asked them to send a proposal on the number of fire extinguishers required and other measures that need to be taken to ensure fire tenders have easy access to the premises. We are expecting the proposal from them shortly,” said V D Jayaram, Assistant Executive Engineer with the PWD, who has been assigned the maintenance of the Legislators’ Home.Though the firemen are stationed at Vidhana Soudha to attend calls immediately and a lot of money is spent to equip the building with fire safety equipment, maintenance of safety equipment — Including regular replacement of fire extinguishers, lack of details such as date of inspection, date of refilling, next refilling due and signature of the certifying authority. One can only imagine the plight of other government buildings when no effort is being made to replace the fire extinguishers at Vidhana Soudha.Library at Vidhana Soudha The library of Vidhana Soudha is no exception. The Fire and Emergency services personnel have placed a number of fire extinguishers at different places in the library, with no necessary details or labels. An employee of Fire and Emergency Services said that these fire extinguishers are being replaced on a regular basis. When questioned about the lack of details, he said, “There is a shortage of labels that consist the details of date of inspection, date of refilling, due and signature of certifying authority,” the employee said on condition of anonymity.