Delhi: Is that tent fire-safe? Your guess as good as officials’

NEW DELHI: Thousands of tented venues created on open grounds for weddings and other events are in fact tinderboxes that the Delhi Fire Service is unable to monitor or inspect for safety violations. The incident of such a venue going up in flames in Pitampura on Tuesday night only reiterates that there is no self-regulation as required of venue managers under the guidelines framed in 2010 after the state government met tent-house owners on the matter.

It is estimated that there are more than 2,500 tent houses which arrange venues for social occasions across the city. Chief fire officer Atul Garg said that since the fire department cannot monitor them individually, the tent owners are asked to give an undertaking that they will observe the fire-safety norms.


The tent-house owners are required to simply put up a notice outside the tents declaring that they have complied with the guidelines. Firemen claim that in reality most safety regulations are openly violated in the absence of a monitoring authority. The venue managers can be prosecuted for making false declarations about safety compliance, but checks are rarely conducted since the tents are put up days before the actual event.

The firemen are actually empowered by law to inspect any venue and recommend sealing of the tented area if it is found lacking in fire safety. In reality, such inspections are difficult due to the lack of human resources, admitted a fire officer. “We are pushing for a step-by-step check to make the tent houses comply, but before that they need to be recognised under a legal framework,” said Garg.

During recent checks on some tent houses in north-west and outer Delhi, the fire department observed that that most do not have staff trained to deal with fire incidents or the equipment to manage blazes. This was underlined even in the Pitampura incident on Monday, when the tent-house employees all fled from the fire site, leaving it to the cops and Delhi Metro staffers from the Netaji Subhash Place metro station to aid the firemen in dousing the flames.

The use of several generators too represents high risk. The Srirangam marriage hall fire in 2004 in which more than 50 people were killed, for example, had started from a short circuit in a generator.

That is why the fire department has welcomed DDA’s proposals to itself construct semi-permanent kalyan mandapams to hire out for social functions or to let out some venues for longer periods provided the tent houses met certain safety conditions.