KOCHI: The fire and rescue services department has started inspecting all the buildings with height of 16m and more in Ernakulam.
Of the 25 buildings inspected so far, which are 60m high, six residential buildings have been found violating safety norms.
The owners were issued notices asking them to rectify the violation and report it to fire officials.
“We could not carry out any inspection since the pandemic struck last year. We have constituted a committee for inspecting buildings and directives have been issued to each fire station to conduct inspection. Many buildings have been found without maintaining proper fire safety equipment,” said regional fire officer P Dileepan.
Fire force will inspect the buildings, which were found violating safety norms, again after a few days.
If the building owner or the residents’ associations fail to address the safety violations, the department will give a report to the district collector requesting to act against the concerned under the Disaster Management Act.
The building owners should renew their fire no-objection certificate (NOC) every year. It has been found that some owners failed to renew the NOC for the past two years.
The fire force department does not have the power to take penal action against those violating the fire safety norms in the buildings. So, they approach the district administration or local bodies requesting to act against violators. It has been found that the talk back system, sprinkler, pump system are not functional and the whole fire system remains not updated in many buildings.
The reasons for not renewing the NOC are attributed to various factors like the whole building is not fully occupied or the builder has not handed over it to owners.
Fire and rescue authorities say that people do not give importance to fire safety aspects.
“Gandhinagar fire station itself had issued notices to some of the high-rise buildings in its limit as they failed to address the defect. Before this, we had conducted inspections in hospitals and they also failed to renew the NOC. Despite repeated inspections and notices, some hospitals do not even rectify the defects. In such cases, we have asked the Kochi corporation to take action against the hospitals concerned,” said Radhakrishnan, Gandhinagar fire station officer.
The standard fire and special perils insurance policy is taken by many builders or residents’ associations for buildings. All the documents related to the building should be active to avail insurance protection, if any untoward incident happens.
“If the documents, including annual fire safety NOC, are not active due to the failure to renew it annually and a fire incident happens in the building during that period, it won’t get the insurance benefit,” said insurance surveyor Laiju George.
