The number of cracker-related accidents in the district during Deepavali was significantly less this time, thanks to an incessant drizzle and intermittent heavy rain in the past week.
Only five fire accidents were reported on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (till 6 p.m.) as against 15 accidents reported in the corresponding period last year, District Fire Officer P. Saravanakumar has said. Two other fire accidents were also reported on these days but they were not related to fireworks, and one of them was due to an electrical short-circuit. “All fires were minor in nature and were put out without much difficulty,” Mr. Saravanakumar said.
Madurai district had been experiencing rain for the last five days that had left almost all the thatched roofs and other easily inflammable things completely wet.
Most of the accidents occur on Deepavalai due to fire caused by flying rockets. And since it rained even on Wednesday, the drenched thatched roofs were safe. “The rain spared us,” Station Fire Officer (Tallakulam), Chezhian said on Thursday.
Similarly, the awareness programme on safe Deepavali conducted for school and college students helped in reduction of accidents, SFO (Madurai) N. Suresh Kumar said. The fire officials had been visiting schools and colleges to educate them on the safety measures to be adopted while bursting crackers.
“Our concentration was on safeguarding vital organs such as eyes, ears and mouth since any harm to these organs might prove deadly to their career,” Mr. Chezhian said.
The officials had also taught the students against using rockets in thickly populated residential areas as it could spark fire accidents.
The students were also asked not to use glass and tin containers while bursting crackers as they could act as shrapnel and injure people.
However, the rain gave some tense moments to fire personnel of Tallakulam as a drunk man, who had reportedly gone to Vaigai river, went missing near Thathaneri. The search for the missing man that started at around 6 p.m. in the river, with high water flow went on till 9 p.m. The search continued on Thursday too.
