AIIMS firefighting hampered due to blocked approach road, ongoing construction work

On Saturday, the fire started from one of the laboratories on the second floor of the PC block. Officers said that the five storey building is in a non-patient area.

A skylift — an elevated platform used for dousing fire in high-rise buildings — used by the Delhi Fire Services could not reach the five-storyed teaching or pre-clinical (PC) block in AIIMS for the first three hours of fire fighting operation on Saturday, officials said.

Firefighters douse the fire after it broke out in PC block near the emergency ward on the 2nd floor at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), in New Delhi. (ANI Photo)

While ongoing construction, debris and encroachment had just left one approach path for fire tenders to reach the block, unorganized parking and some trees did not allow firefighters to take the sky lift up to the burning building.

This, they say, caused the fire fighting operation to go on for more than seven hours.

On Saturday, the fire started from one of the laboratories on the second floor of the PC block. Officers said that the five storey building is in a non-patient area. While it took 40 fire tenders and 200 firemen to control the fire in a more than seven hours operation, no one was injured in the incident, officials said.

However, senior officials say that the fire could have been controlled well within two hours if they had been able to reach the building in time.

“Our control room was alerted at 4.50pm. Initially we had rushed 6-7 fire tenders. By 5.05pm the magnitude of fire was stepped up to ‘make-4’ and by 5.25pm the blaze had become of ‘serious’ magnitude. We kept pressing in more fire tenders and the total number reached up to 40,” said a fire officer, who supervised Saturday’s operation.

The officer said that the first obstacle was that the fire tenders could only get close to the building from the left side as the right side was blocked due to an ongoing construction work, some dumped debris and encroachment. The right side also had the building’s generator and electricity room.

“Further, the approach road up to the building had too many cars parked unevenly and trees on the way, which had further narrowed our access road. Because of this, we could not drive our sky lift (which is bigger in size than usual fire tenders) up to the PC block,” he said.

Chief fire officer, Atul Garg, said that by 6.30pm they had almost controlled the fire. “But since we could not use our skylift, we were not able to spray water on the fourth and fifth floors. The fire that had started from the second floor, spread to the floors above through vertical shafts and again turned into a massive blaze within half an hour. It was only at 7pm that we managed to remove some of our fire tenders and make way for the skylift so that the fire on the fifth and fourth floors could be controlled,” Garg said.

The operation lasted till at least 11.15pm, the CFO said. “The cooling process, however, continued till Sunday afternoon. Had we been able to use the skylift from the beginning, the fire would have been checked a lot earlier. We, however, successfully managed to not let the blaze spread to adjoining blocks occupied by patients,” he said.

“There is no point in alleging anything. There was a fire and our internal team could not control it. Hence, the fire team was called in. The fire was severe and it took five or six hours to control it,” said DK Sharma, medical superintendent, AIIMS.

Firefighters said that the blaze took a massive shape as the PC block had doctors’ chambers on the fourth and fifth floors with a lot of wooden partition and carpets. “The third floor has auditoriums and classrooms with furniture and computers and the first and second floor have laboratories. All this fuelled the fire,” said a fire fighter, not wishing to be named.

He also said that since the building is an old one, false ceilings were built to install air conditioners and shafts full of wires that gave the fire way to spread upwards.

Garg said they are yet to check if the building had a “No Objection Certificate” from their department.

However medical superintendent, DK Sharma, said that all necessary fire safety measures were in place.

“The building had a proper NOC, there were sprinklers, fire hoses and everything else. The only thing was that the fire was so severe that everything must have been damaged. Also, there was so much smoke that it was not possible for our staff to do anything,” Sharma said.