Urban News

Shops at Borivali’s Goyal Shopping Centre, which caught fire on Friday, had blocked a mandatory ventilation system located at the basement level, obstructed exit doors and had not installed any sprinkling mechanism. A fire brigade officer was killed in the blaze that took his colleagues almost 12 hours to douse.

The shops had made several structural changes and had allegedly flouted the Development Control regulations, prompting the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to order a survey of all similar old commercial shopping complexes in the city.

Fire brigade officials said the operation was their toughest in recent times. “The smoke was dense and strong. Non-ventilation and adding a level in the basement with stairs, blocking the exits, made it difficult to take the water line inside,” said chief fire officer Uday Tatkare.

According to firemen, the shops on the ground floor had created two levels with a staircase leading to the basement. “There has to be ventilation at the ground floor level near the ceiling. There was a ventilation grid, but it was obstructed, thus blocking the smoke in small places,” Tatkare said.

Absence of a sprinkler system and closure of exit doors in the basement led them into “a maze of smoke”.

Assistant municipal commissioner, R Central ward, AS Wagralkar said the shopping centre had carried out illegal constructions. “They have also made change of user and action was taken against them under the Maharashtra Region and Town Planning (MRTP) Act.”

The officials said there are several such ground-plus-one and basement-level shops in complexes in Borivali, Kandivli, Malad, Bhuleshwar and Kalbadevi. “We will assess these complexes to verify if any structural changes have been made,” a senior official said.

Cause of death
The postmortem report of 45-year-old fire officer Pradip S Zagde has revealed that he had died of asphyxia, but the report has been sent to the forensic department before formally announcing the cause of death. “There was carbon soot in his respiratory system, but it was less in proportion,” chief fire officer Tatkare said.

Zagde was wearing a breathing apparatus, commissioned in 1998 from Germany, and had been using it for at least 41 minutes till the time of his death. “The cylinder of the apparatus functions for 45 minutes and it sends out an alarm when oxygen is about to get over. Zagde’s apparatus started ringing and perhaps, he had lost his balance and the cupboard fell on him in the panic to get a fresh cylinder. We found him near the exit.”

The fire brigade has around 550 imported breathing apparatus and nearly 225 of them were used on Friday.