Most commercial hubs in the city lack fire safety measures and lanes leading up to them do not have proper accessibility for fire tenders to reach quickly and douse flames, an audit has found.

Rabindra Thakur, fire safety officer of Jamshedpur (at Golmuri), prepared the audit report that he submitted to East Singhbhum deputy commissioner (DC) Ravi Shankar Shukla on Monday.

Three back-to-back fire mishaps between December 2019 and January 2020 had led the DC to constitute in the last week of January a special committee for carrying out the fire safety audit of commercial hubs. Additional district magistrate (ADM, law and order) Nand Kishore Lal was the supervising officer of the committee.

Sources in the fire safety office who inspected commercial hubs such as Sakchi, Bistupur, Golmuri, Baridih, Telco, Sidhgora and Agrico (under Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee) and Jugsalai (under Jugsalai municipality) said there were glaring lapses in fire safety at all the commercial hubs.

“The fire safety measures are almost absent, barring the fire extinguishers arranged by the shopkeepers on their own and kept inside their shops,” said a source who was part of the audit team. “Most of the water hydrants — required to refill fire tenders after they exhaust their water — have been encroached upon by shops and we would have to return back to the fire station for refilling of water which would cause loss of precious time. Lanes in the commercial hubs have also been encroached upon, leaving little space for even a small fire tender to arrive at the shops in case of emergencies.”

The roads leading to shops are not even 12ft wide, the minimum width needed for the smaller fire tenders to reach the spots.

“We cannot think of taking big fire tenders to these spots as it is impossible to enter due to the narrow roads which been encroached upon by makeshift kiosks,” the source said. “This apart there are dangling electric wires in non-Tata Steel areas like Jugsalai, Baridih, Sidhgora and Golmuri which are potential spots for electrocution. Even the water hydrant pipes were found underground in several places in Jugsalai.”

The fire-fighting systems in the multi-storey market complexes were, however, found to be functional.

The audit team comprised fire safety officer Rabindra Thakur, representatives of the civic body concerned (Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee, Mango Notified Area Committee and Jugsalai municipality) and the circle officer of Jamshedpur and Mango.

East Singhbhum DC Ravi Shankar Shukla said the report would be acted upon.

“We have received the report and after the Holi break we would sit and discuss on the corrective steps suggested by the special committee and initiate action through the local civic bodies so that the fire safety measures are in place at the earliest,” Shukla said.