With summer picking up pace, GHMC takes up fire safety drills

Hyderabad: With the onset of summer, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s Enforcement Vigilance & Disaster Management (EV&DM) initiated awareness programmes and emergency evacuation drills to educate people how to respond and escape during emergencies.

To ensure preparedness of fire-related incidents, an action plan has been initiated with regularly conducting awareness and evacuation drills at various places--including most vulnerable spots/buildings like schools, hospitals, shopping malls, office buildings, hotels and banquet halls, where large numbers of people gather.

According to EV&DM, teams under the supervision of the Station Fire Officer (SFO) demonstrate and involve the inmates in practice how to escape fire, evacuate buildings during emergencies, operation of fire-fighting equipment, first-aid, CPR to save lives and also creating awareness to the citizens on ‘Dos’ and ‘Don’ts’ in case of emergencies.

On Wednesday the DRF teams of EV&DM conducted emergency evacuation drills at Premier Hospital, Kadarbagh in Langar Houz, Fashion factory in Saroornagar, Bajaj Electronics, Chandrayangutta, Fashion factory in KPHB and Marriott Hotel, Lower Tank Bund.

According to EV&DM, the DRF Teams conducted over 82 awareness programmes, including 41 at public places, 25 shopping malls/showrooms, 12 schools/colleges and four hostels/apartments in the last two weeks. “The EV&DM recently trained 43 staffers of six ULBs in batch-1 and 39 of 12 ULBs in batch-2 on disaster rescue operations,” said N Prakash Reddy, Director, EV&DM. Director-General of Fire Services Y Nagi Reddy said, to meet natural calamities in the future days, department trained 72 personnel for the past 15 days in various rescue techniques, including basic flood and rope techniques. Officials of GHMC, Fire department, TSSPDCL and HMWS&SB will be coordinating during fire mishaps round-the-clock.

For evacuation drill and awareness, owners of building/management of establishments like schools, hospitals, shopping malls can call helpline numbers and request for mock drills. Citizens can also report any unauthorised/illegal storage of hazardous chemicals/material in residential buildings.Their identity will be kept confidential. Help line: 040-29555500, Mobile No. 9000113667.