The Technical Committee for implementation of a fire management system for Mysuru palace has failed to take cognisance of the expertise of the Building Fire Research Centre (BFRC) established at the National Institute of Engineering (NIE) in the city.
This is the only such centre in the entire south India with expertise in fire safety and engineering and was established in 2004. Since then, it has been accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) and is also recognised by the BIS for testing of fire extinguishers. The constitution of the Technical Committee is a fall out of a fire which broke out at the entrance of the palace in May this year. While the technical committee has roped in members from the engineering wing of CESC besides fire safety officers, it also has members from non-technical areas who are drawn from other departments like heritage and museums, police, palace security, among others. But what is intriguing is that specialists in the field of fire engineering – which is a separate branch by itself and goes far beyond random installation of fire extinguishers and smoke detectors – have been ignored in the constitution of a technical committee for an iconic structure like the Mysuru palace.
Founded by N.Suresh, the BFRC has worked on various projects in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh and IIT, Roorkee. A senior faculty member of NIE said the NABL recognition, which comes after assessments in accordance with international standards, is a vindication of its competence and strengths. It is ironic that BFRC does not find a place in the technical committee though the only scientific fire load studies for Mysuru palace was conducted by it under Dr. Suresh whose teaching and research areas are in the field of fire resistance of structures. "Fire Load" is estimation of the severity of fire and heat output in a structure in case of an inferno and helps incorporate precautionary measures to reduce the damage.
The palace fire load study spanned nearly 8 months and covered every square inch of the palace and estimated scientifically the volume of the total combustible material per sq ft.
This led to the estimation and computation of the severity of the heat that a particular portion of the palace could generate in case of a fire.
"It is with such data that precautionary measures could be installed to douse a fire in a particular area. If the severity of the heat is intense, a few fire extinguishers placed at random may not be adequate at all and is not scientific fire safety management," said a source conversant with the issue.
He said installation of fire safety measures without conducting fire load studies will be a futile exercise. In addition, alternative methods to conventional fire extinguishing systems have also been touched upon as palace is a heritage property with paintings and random use of water or chemical sprays could damage them irretrievably.
Stakeholder aver that the imperatives of a technical committee and a sound fire management system in place is a must given the fact that the existing Mysuru palace was built after the earlier wooden palace was gutted in a major inferno in 1897.
