Hospitals warned against violation of fire safety
Hyderabad, Dec 17 (INN): Director General Fire Services Department Ray Vinay Ranjan has warned that the Fire Department will put up a board saying 'Fire Unsafe Building' in front of the hospitals, who have not initiated Fire Safety measures.
Addressing a meeting with the Andhra Pradesh Super Specialty Hospitals Association (ASHA) here on Saturday, Ranjan said that during inspections the department has found that most of the hospitals have been misusing the cellars by keeping generators or transformers.
He said such a misuse was strictly prohibited under the law. He warned the hospitals of stern action if they do not stop the misuse of cellars.
The DG Fire Services directed the owners of the high rise hospitals to shift generators and transformers immediately and arrange for open areas for the safety of the patients.
He also asked the hospital authorities to prepare an emergency plan along with roll allocation to the staff, to be followed in cases of emergency.
Ranjan said that the Fire Services Department was ready to guide the Architects on National Building Code (NBC).
GHMC Commissioner MT Krishna Babu asked the ASHA members to be committed for using cellars only for parking purposes.
The hospital authorities should vacate the canteens, OP blocks, dormitories and pathological labs that have come up in cellars, within a week's time, he said. After one week, he said that the GHMC would start vacating the cellars.
The Commissioner informed that out of 91 bigger hospitals in the GHMC the fire prevention wing have visited and inspected 23 bigger hospitals and all of them were using the cellar for other purposes.
The Commissioner asked the ASHA members to post a Fire Safety Officer in their respective hospitals to look after all the Fire Prevention arrangements and asked them to conduct mock drills once in a month with a proper record.
He also asked them to involve GHMC/Fire Department once in a quarter for their mock drill. He also said that GHMC will organize for one day work shop for fire safety officers.
Additional Commissioner (Planning) K Dhanunjay Reddy, Director Fire Services P Venkateshwar, ASHA president Dr B Bhasker Rao and other senior officials were present in the meeting.
News Posted: 17 December, 2011
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