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Why fire safety must be a boardroom priority
This article is authored by Jeewan Mahadik, senior head, Audit and Consultancy, British Safety Council.
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Fire safety should not wait for a crisis to reach the boardroom. In 2024, India recorded 5,971 fire accidents and 5,888 fatalities; a stark reminder that fire risk remains a serious business and life-safety issue. Recent chemical-sector incidents this year, including the chemical factory fire in Bhiwandi, the Ambernath MIDC chemical factory fire, and the chemicals plant explosion in Barnala, show how quickly process, storage, and ignition-control failures can threaten people, production, and continuity.
For manufacturers, prevention begins when leaders treat fire safety as part of how the business is run. Electrical systems, heat, fuel, storage, and maintenance discipline are everyday operational risks that can escalate quickly when controls are weak, or assumptions go untested.
Compliance helps establish a baseline, but it is not assurance. A fire no-objection certificate, extinguisher tag, drill record, or system invoice may show that controls exist; they do not prove detection, alarm, isolation, suppression, evacuation, and emergency response will work during peak production, shutdown maintenance, or a blocked-access scenario.
Boards and plant heads should, therefore, look beyond paperwork. Real resilience means systems work when needed, people know what to do, and leaders act early on warning signs.
Weak signals become disasters when they are treated as routine. Across industrial fires and explosions, the pattern is familiar: Hot work near combustibles, incompatible chemical storage, electrical faults, poor housekeeping, delayed alarms or evacuations, inadequate exits, inadequate fire protection systems and a lack of process safety management. Each may begin as a manageable lapse; together they create the conditions for rapid escalation, especially where solvents, dust, packaging, plastics, pressurised systems or high-temperature processes are present.
The warning signs are often visible: repeated electrical tripping, temporary wiring, weak fire-door discipline, blocked aisles, frequent leaks or spills, alarm faults, hydrant pressure issues, expired extinguishers, blocked fire-tender access, outdated emergency plans and process upsets. These are business risks, not administrative gaps.
Manufacturing sites combine several risk drivers: electrical systems, thermal processes, warehouses, contractors, chemicals, lubricants, packaging and buildings that have expanded over time. Effective fire risk assessment starts by identifying ignition sources, fuels and people at risk, then testing whether fire can be detected, contained, controlled and escaped from safely.
Fire safety must, therefore, be managed as an integrated system that links process safety, electrical safety, maintenance, warehousing, contractor control, training and emergency response.
In chemical, pharmaceutical, oil, gas, fuel and other major-hazard operations, process safety must sit alongside fire safety at board level. Major events often begin with loss of containment, uncontrolled reactions, dust explosions, solvent vapours or asset-integrity failures.
Leaders should review hazard identification, operating discipline, maintenance and inspection, management of change, permit-to-work controls, emergency response, incident learning and senior oversight as one connected system. When process safety is integrated into daily decisions, escalation risks can be addressed before they become fires, explosions or toxic releases.
A credible fire safety audit is not a ceremonial inspection. It reviews documents, tests arrangements on the shop floor, speaks to those responsible for controls and checks whether recommendations are acted upon. It should ask whether hazards have changed, controls still work, people can evacuate and corrective actions are closed with evidence.
In practical terms, that means looking closely at the areas where fire risk most often builds unnoticed, including:
- Electrical integrity: load assessment, thermography, earthing, panel hygiene and temporary connections.
- Fire protection adequacy and reliability: pumps, hydrants, sprinklers, detectors, alarms, extinguishers and emergency lighting.
- Escape and response: exits, signage, alarm audibility, muster points, drills and contractor inclusion.
- Hazardous materials: segregation, ventilation, gas-cylinder storage, chemical compatibility, spill control and hot-work permits.
- Housekeeping and fire load: packaging, waste, aisle discipline, storage height and separation from ignition sources.
- Management strength: roles, training, change control, incident learning, maintenance backlog and senior review.
Once an audit exposes gaps, leadership must ensure they are closed. Findings should become a management action plan, classified by life-safety risk, fire-spread potential, business interruption impact and legal priority, with owners, budgets, deadlines and field verification.
Boards and owners should ask for a monthly fire-risk dashboard covering critical findings, overdue maintenance, pump-test results, alarm faults, hot-work permits, electrical hotspots, drill outcomes, contractor deviations and statutory renewals. The dashboard should show whether risk is rising or falling.
Fire losses rarely stop at property damage. They can harm workers, halt production, disrupt customers, invite scrutiny, complicate insurance claims and weaken buyer confidence. For manufacturing leaders, the practical response is clear: treat every audit finding as a warning, every small fire as a lesson and every near miss as evidence that the system needs attention. Compliance confirms that minimum expectations have been met; assurance asks whether people can escape, systems can respond and the business can recover. The boardroom test is whether the organisation acts on weak signals before they become the conditions for a fire to start or spread.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Jeewan Mahadik, senior head, Audit and Consultancy, British Safety Council.
