Basic lessons on fire safety will very soon form part of academic curriculum of the students of classes 3 to 8 in Telangana.
The Telangana State Disaster Response and Fire Services Department sent a proposal in November to the State Education Department seeking to include ‘fire safety’ lessons in school curriculum.
“Every year, the department conducts several awareness campaigns in schools, colleges, industrial areas and at various other locations to educate the general public on fire safety. Taking forward this process of educating masses, we made this proposal on lessons for school children,” said State Disaster Response and Fire Services Department director general Rajiv Ratan.
He said that those lessons would have much more impact on the children and the curriculum would also focus on the precautionary measures that must be taken to avoid causalities during fire accidents.
While addressing the annual press conference on Saturday, the official said that the total number of fire and emergency calls received by the department registered an upward trend, with about 500 additional calls responded compared to the previous year.
As many as 9,286 calls pertaining to fire and emergency were responded in 2017 when compared to 9,286 responded last year. Of them, 124 cases were major and serious, while 8,943 were related to small cases.
“Property valued at ₹685.14 crore was saved from getting damaged, while property valued at ₹371.96 crore was saved last year,” said Mr. Ratan.
Whenever a fire and emergency call is received at the control room, the duty officer informs the same to the police control room for clearance of traffic for easy and quick movement of the fire vehicles to the accident spot.
Mr. Ratan said that the officials conduct surprise inspections of the building for which computerised ‘No Objection Certificate’ is issued to verify the working condition of the fire safety system as per the guidelines.
“As many as 411 surprise inspections were conducted in 2017 and 24 were prosecuted for violating the norms,” he said.
The department also conducts awareness campaigns at Metro Rail stations every week. He urged the citizens to avail the newly-launched online services including issuing of NOC, fire safety licence, standby vehicles and fire attendance certificates.
