BANGALORE: When a fire broke out in Navrathan Jewellers on MG Road on July 3, it was peak hour for traffic. The road had to be closed to vehicles as 10 fire tenders battled the blaze for over four hours.
As the fire tenders emptied their water, the firemen had a dilemma - rushing to the BWSSB facility at High Grounds or back to Mayo Hall fire station were the only options. But that would have taken away some precious time during which the fire would have raged. The Carlton Tower tragedy where fire tenders ran out of water while dousing the blaze that claimed nine lives in 2010 weighed heavily on the firemen's mind.
It was then that it struck the fire brigade that there was water only a stone's throw from the jewellery shop. The MG Road Metro station with its huge water stocks came handy in for the fire brigade which took 45,000 litres from the utility to battle the blaze.
All Metro stations have huge water-storage facilities for fire contingences. The MG Road station alone has 1 lakh litres of water stored in its sumps.
BLY Chavan, general manager (operations), BMRC, explained, "It is a basic design in all our stations to have water-storage facilities for handling fire accidents as we follow international standards and national building codes. The water is harvested from rainwater that falls on the tracks. In case of requirement, we are ready to share water with the fire brigade to douse flames that break out near our stations."
Trinity, Halasuru, Indiranagar and Vivekananda stations store 50,000 litres of water each. Byappanhalli has a tank that can store 4 lakh litres of water. With the Metro network spreading across the city, the fire brigade has help at hand whenever its fire tenders run dry.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/When-Metro-turned-firemans-friend/articleshow/38284196.cms
As the fire tenders emptied their water, the firemen had a dilemma - rushing to the BWSSB facility at High Grounds or back to Mayo Hall fire station were the only options. But that would have taken away some precious time during which the fire would have raged. The Carlton Tower tragedy where fire tenders ran out of water while dousing the blaze that claimed nine lives in 2010 weighed heavily on the firemen's mind.
It was then that it struck the fire brigade that there was water only a stone's throw from the jewellery shop. The MG Road Metro station with its huge water stocks came handy in for the fire brigade which took 45,000 litres from the utility to battle the blaze.
All Metro stations have huge water-storage facilities for fire contingences. The MG Road station alone has 1 lakh litres of water stored in its sumps.
BLY Chavan, general manager (operations), BMRC, explained, "It is a basic design in all our stations to have water-storage facilities for handling fire accidents as we follow international standards and national building codes. The water is harvested from rainwater that falls on the tracks. In case of requirement, we are ready to share water with the fire brigade to douse flames that break out near our stations."
Trinity, Halasuru, Indiranagar and Vivekananda stations store 50,000 litres of water each. Byappanhalli has a tank that can store 4 lakh litres of water. With the Metro network spreading across the city, the fire brigade has help at hand whenever its fire tenders run dry.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bangalore/When-Metro-turned-firemans-friend/articleshow/38284196.cms
