Tamil Nadu - Madurai   

Putting up a fearless fight against fire

T. Saravanan

It is important for the public to know how to react during crisis

Madurai: As soon as disaster strikes everyone presses the panic button. Gripped with fear, people become dazed. During such situations it needs enormous courage and conviction for a person to swing into a rescue act, for which one has to be well aware of precautions and preventive methods. Once a person learns the techniques, he/she becomes more useful to the society and saves lives.

Speakers at a function organised to observe the National Disaster Reduction Day at St. Joseph's Girls Higher Secondary School, on Saturday, focussed on this theme. Besides, Fire Service and Rescue personnel performed a mock drill to demonstrate various techniques adopted to put out spreading fire and to rescue suffering people.

"Of course, we are there to rescue people from the place of accident but it is also important for the public to be aware of the nature of the fire and what to do at the time of a crisis. Hence, we thought of conducting periodical exercises like this one to educate the public," said V. Ramachandran, Divisional Fire Officer.

As part of the exercise, Fire Service was alerted of a fire accident and just within minutes a team of fire service and rescue personnel rushed to the spot and extinguished the flames.

At first, they demonstrated how to put out a Class `A'fire, a normal carbonised fire. The personnel extinguished it by spraying water and rescued a person from the suffocating smoke. Then, they explained how to put out fire on oil. "It is a tricky situation as it can spread easily. But it could be subdued by using a wet gunny bag or through foam or using dry chemical powder extinguisher," said G. Elango, Additional Divisional Fire Officer.

Next on their list was fire accident due to Liquid Petroleum Gas leak.

"If fire catches on LPG cylinder due to gas leak it could be put out either through fire extinguishers using carbon-di-oxide or by spraying sodium bicarbonate powder. The fire could also be doused with wet gunny bag. People should understand that the cylinder never explodes when the regulator is open. Only when the cylinder is in a room engulfed with fire and the regulator is closed, there are chances of explosion," Mr. Elango explained.

Various other rescue acts, like rescuing people from the first floor of the building through rope ladders, extension ladders and by tying knots, were also demonstrated on the occasion.

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