Recent fire incident at a school in Tamil Nadu, which claimed several lives compelled me to pen this piece. Few years ago, in a similar incident, several people lost lives in Uphaar Cinema fire incident in Delhi. I will try to analyze the situation based on whatever experience I have had in India and USA, while working in construction industry.
Let me give you my background first. My father is a B. E. Civil 1968 batch. He has been in construction industry since then. I obtained my B. E. Civil in 1996 from L.D. College of Engineering in Ahmedabad. I obtained M.S. in Civil Engineering subsequently at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA in December of 2001. I have worked extensively with my father in construction industry in India and I have worked in USA with a construction management consulting from since August 2001.
I will first explain the building codes in USA related to life safety systems (LSS) and then I will move on to explain codes and ills with the construction industry in India.
USA has very stringent LSS codes and are implemented strictly all over. When a fire occurs, the death is caused due to mainly three reasons. Burns, smoke suffocation and indiscriminate crowd trying to exit at the same time running on each other.
Most interior construction in US is usually done by Gypsum board assemblies, popularly known as drywall. Gypsum board is a combustible material and catches fire quickly; however, rate of fire spreading into adjacent areas depends on thickness and number of drywall layers. Typically, most walls have fire rating of minimum 1 hour. Let’s say unit #901 catches fire, then for a 1-hour rated wall, it will take a minimum of one hour for fire to spread in the adjacent unit #902. This gives people in units other than the accident unit adequate time to evacuate.
There are mainly three types of systems in USA to fight the fire. Sprinkler, fire alarms and smoke evacuation system. Sprinkler has a wax bottom and is installed in the ceiling with bottom facing the floor. All sprinklers in the building are attached to the main water tank of the building. In the event of a localized fire, the heat reaches to the sprinkler installed in the ceiling and melts wax. This activates the sprinkler and water is blasted thru the sprinkler to control the fire.
If the fire is wide spread and wild, and if it spreads faster than controllability of the sprinklers, then fire alarms come into picture. Fire alarms get activated when they sense more than certain amount of smoke. Fire alarms are installed in common areas such as leaving room, dining area, corridors and elevator lobbies on each floor. When one fire alarm is activated, it energizes a centralized fire alarm panel, which in turn activates fire alarm in all the units in the zone prone to fire in the building. This tells all the occupants of the affected area that a fire has occurred and evacuate urgently.
Third important component of LSS is some evacuation system, popularly known as smoke-evac. In simple terms, purpose of smoke evac system is to remove smoke from the building ASAP to avoid deaths due to suffocation and for people to see the means of egress. Each floor is designed in such a way that in case of fire, a centralized smoke evac system is activated. For people to evacuate without running on each other, all stairs have to be of certain width with required step size to avoid tripping.
Life safety systems are very complicated and it takes approximately 12-16 weeks to open the building from starting up of life safety systems. These regulations are implemented strictly in US and the factor of safety is mostly inordinately high to mitigate impacts of error. All facilities have to be cleared through electrical, plumbing, mechanical, building and fire department before opening.
In India, the interior construction is mainly done by clay bricks and therefore fire rating is higher than gypsum board. So, in usual case, fire should not spread faster than gypsum board. But the problem lies in the situation where building occupants don’t get adequate timely notice to evacuate before fire catches them. Sprinklers are installed in hotels and luxury properties but other than that it is a remote concept in India. Forget about smoke evac system and fire alarm devices.
In Uphaar Cinema and Tamil Nadu school fire tragedies, more deaths occurred due to suffocation and people running over each other. Reason – occupants did not get adequate time to evacuate and therefore they got trapped in fire. Additionally, means of egress in India are not usually adequate to serve optimum capacity.
So, is the problem really with the building codes? Not really. Building codes are I think stringent enough to prevent deaths in case of fire. Problem lies in implementation of the codes. Any builder has to get plans approved by City before commencing construction. It is City government’s job to verify if the plans conform to prevailing codes. If not, City may reject the plans and may not issue permit to start construction. However, as we all know, due to corruption, many factors are overlooked and criteria for approval is not conformity of codes but how much money the builder can pay the building official, obviously under table.
Inspection are not carried properly. Again, inspections are approved based on the favours received from the builder. Additionally, construction industry in India is not regulated at all. You don’t need any license to build a building. Anybody, who has money can go out and start constructing buildings. This is highly risky, considering the person who is building it is not aware of technical and safety aspect of what he is doing and he does not have any experience. He cannot even read the drawings properly. Any minor mistake – say wrong interpretation of drawings - can claim several lives.
Red tape is extensive. PWD in is better known as Public Worst Department or Public Waste Department. There is a reason for that. Do you know if amount of money Indian Government has pumped in the infrastructure since independence had really been spent without corruption, India by now would have 100% electrification and we would be selling excess electricity to Bangladesh. We would have better road network than most developed countries and there would have been no drought and flood.
There is only one solution to the problem. Remove corruption. Removal of corruption is only possible if government starts outsourcing construction management work to private consultants rather than doing it in-house. Vajpayee was I think first to implement this. The national highway development project (Golden Triangle and East-West/North-South Corridors) is being developed this way. This has made it possible to build 11KM road per day comparing with 11 KM per year in first 50 years of independence.
I think we will see some definite actions from government only when a minister’s kin will become victim of substandard construction.