A special drive of fire audit conducted by the BMC has found 441 nursing homes across the city to have not complied with the fire safety norms. Taking a serious note of these lapses, the civic body has registered a First information report (FIR) against 10 nursing homes in the local police stations.
On July 3, during a hearing on PIL, the Bombay High Court had questioned the BMC as to why it was not taking stern action against illegal nursing homes in the city. Accordingly, the civic body conducted a special drive from July 11-25. The team of the health department inspected 1,258 nursing homes. Of these, 643 nursing homes have complied with fire safety measures.
Notices were sent to around 650 nursing homes. 181 of them were found closed at the time of inspection. “Many of the violations were very minor like the exit door was locked, the fire extinguisher expired and needs to be renewed every year. So it was corrected immediately after BMC’s inspection. The 441 nursing homes where major violations were noticed have been issued notices to put fire safety measures in place within 120 days or face action,” said the civic officials.
Dr. Mangala Gomare, executive health officer of BMC said, “We have conducted a survey and prepared a list of nursing homes that are registered and are with and without fire compliance. Notices have been sent to the one without compliance and have given them time to rectify it.” Mumbai Fire brigade conducts regular audits and notices to violators are served under the Maharashtra Fire Prevention and Life Safety Measures Act, 2006.
Earlier a fire audit was conducted after the incident at Bhandara that broke out in a government hospital in January, killing ten infants. In another incident last year, 11 people died in a major fire that broke out in Sunrise Hospitals of Dreams Mall on LBS Marg in Bhandup (west).
