Fire Services still in its infancy at Diglipur

Is Administration waiting for a disaster??

Staff Correspondent

Diglipur, Feb 28: Last year a massive fire at Diglipur Bazaar, in the month of March, had chilled every residents of Diglipur to the bone. The accident, caught the Fire Services of Diglipur Pant down and showed how inadequate was the presence of Fire Service unit, in a region like Diglipur.

However, the fire couldn’t cause much damage as the fire tender of Andaman Nicobar Command had reached the spot to the rescue of Andaman and Nicobar Fire Services, which then had only one Fire Tender for entire Diglipur region.

After nearly one year, it looks as if the Administration has learnt no lesson from the past mistake. Diglipur, the second largest city ofAndamanandNicobar Islands, still have only one fire tender.

Infact the Fire Service has very thin presence inDiglipurIslandsand appears like and step child of A & N Police Department.

Though the Fire station in Diglipur was established way back in 1988, even after 24 long years, the fire service unit of Diglipur doesn’t have a permanent building. For Fire Services, long back a 0.10 Hcts land was allotted in front of PS Diglipur, but the land is still lying vacant.

Apart from station, there is no Quarter for fire personnel, a land of 5.54 Hect at Madhupur village was allotted for construction of quarters but that piece of land is also lying unutilized. Presently, fire personnel’s are staying in the dormitories of Diglipur Police Station.

This is hard to understand that how the Fire Services is planning to tackle any major fire accident in future as in case of fire accident, it takes less than three minutes to empty the water tank of the fire tender and once again the vehicle has to rush for refilling. This delay in refilling water, after regular interval of time, during fire accident may kill many innocent people.

With boom in business and rapid development in the Diglipur area, the Diglipur market region has seen an unprecedented grown in trade, resulting in expansion of market and mushrooming of new shopping hubs.

Sadly this development is more or less unplanned. In case of a major fire accident it won’t be easy for the Fire Service unit to tackle the fire, promptly.

In entire Diglipur Bazaar there is no Fire Hose, therefore in case of any emergency, helpless people in Diglipur Bazaar will have no other option than waiting for Fire Tenders.

Moreover the Diglipur Bazaar area also does not have Fire Hydrant system, from where Fire tenders could be refilled in case of fire accidents. It seems that even today the Fire Services department is completely unprepared in Diglipur area and the arrangements are totally inadequate.

When contacted, the Chief Fire Officer of A & N Fire Services, Mr. Anyesh Roy, told Andaman Sheekha that the Fire Services had a wooden building opposite PS Diglipur, which is no more in use.

“Now for time being we have shifted to PS Diglipur’s new building as there is lot of space in the said building for barracks and office works,” the CFO said.

Regarding ordering new fire tenders for Diglipur area the CFO said “For every fire tender we require 13 staffs in two shifts and we don’t have that much man power at present. At Kalighat we are opening a new Fire Station soon, which is very close to Diglipur Area. We have already placed orders for Fire Tenders for the Kalighat Fire Station. At Kalighat the work for construction of quarters for Fire Brigade staffs have already started,” he said.

Islanders can only hope that all these planning will become reality soon, infact much before another major Fire accident. (With inputs from Diglipur Correspondent and our Reporter Port Blair, Sarthak Kanjilal)