Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has a plan to make the fire safety norms to give occupancy certificate. According to GHMC and Fire and Emergency services department, every high rise building i.e., commercial buildings which are more than 15 meters high and residential buildings which are of 18 meters height, should have fire-fighting equipment.
This fire fighting equipment should be provided by even non high rise buildings, according to the National Building Code (NBC) 2005. It is mandatory to have the No Objection Certificates which is given by Airports Authority of India and fire services for high rise buildings.
There is a difficulty to civic body to install the fire-fighting equipments in the buildings.
According to the corporation’s new practice, they include the fire prevention installation such as water tanks, sprinkler systems and other requirements in non high rise buildings in the sanctioned plan along with other conditions while releasing permission letter.
To give the occupancy certification, buildings will be inspected by the officers of GHMC Fire prevention wing after completion of the construction of the buildings. Building owners require this occupancy certificate for mortgage portion of the building. To get the Occupancy Certificate, building should be equipped with fire-fighting equipment.
A overhead tank should be there with the capacity of 25000 liters, a booster pump with a capacity of 900 liters/minute, hose reel, manual alarm and fire extinguishers in residential buildings up to stilt+five floors, according to norms. There should be a sprinkler system in buildings which have a cellar with more than 200 square meters.
Equipment has to be provided by the commercial buildings which are less than 15 meters of height, according to the norms. If they are commercial and residential buildings then the staircase should be constructed with the width of 1.5 meters and 1.2 meters. Because, it will be easy for evacuation during fire accident.
Source: Times of India