Many shops in the State capital are running in congested market areas, including Paltan Bazar, sans NOC from the fire department. With the shops huddled together, most having no worthwhile fire-extinguishing or safety equipment, there is the risk of even a minor fire escalating into a conflagration.
A fire officer said that several shops are coming up in the narrow and congested streets in the busy market areas of Dehradun where the fire tenders may not reach swiftly on emergency calls. In most of the cases, had the owners of these commercial establishments applied for NOCs in the department their applications would have been rejected on fire safety ground.
Several new commercial buildings have been constructed on Rajpur Road, Sahastradhara Road, Haridwar Road and Patelnagar areas in the city in recent past. In many of such cases, though the owners had had the buildings’ maps cleared from MDDA they have not secured NOCs from the fire service department after the buildings were completed.
Very few commercial buildings have been made as per national building code of India in the city. As per the Central government guidelines, all the commercial establishments, public and private offices should be constructed as per national building code. The fire officers say fire may cause major disaster and loss of lives in such buildings such as offices, hotels, shopping centers, hospitals, schools and homes.
list of over 60 shops/hotels/complexes which have not procured NOCs from the fire service department were submitted to Mussoorie Dehradun Development Authority (MDDA), district administration and police in the recent past. However, no action has been taken so far.
There are several shop owners who have not cared to renew NOCs for the past many years. Report was sent to the department concerned but no action was taken by the officer concerned so far.
The official in the Fire department is not empowered to take any action or impose penalty against violators, the fire department officials say.
SP Mamgai, Dehradun fire service officer, said that among several proposals to the state government, the fire service department has demanded the fire service officers be empowered to impose challan on such establishments which fail to implement the fire safety norms. As of now, the department can only send notices to the establishments after those who own them are caught violating fire safety norms during inspection conducted by the officers, he added.