Amdavadis’ safety goes up in smoke as AFES phone lines go kaput twice in two weeks

Citizens should thank their lucky stars that there was no fire or emergency on the nights of July 12 and June 27 as no one was able to connect to phone lines at Ahmedabad Fire and Emergency Services control room for several hours

Imagine this: You are jolted from your sleep by the acrid smell of smoke. Your house is on fire and you desperately dial 101and 102 repeatedly for the Ahmedabad Fire and Emergency Services, but none of the calls connect.

This imaginary prospect could very well turn into a real and scary scenario as the Ahmedabad fire service’s phone lines have already stopped working for several hours twice in two weeks.

Both the times, the phone lines got disconnected at night, keeping senior officers on their toes in case an emergency arises. Unlike the phone lines of other emergency services, those of AFES get switched off regularly. On the night of July 12, the phone lines went down for more than an hour. On June 27, all lines to the fire department control room got disconnected from 11.30 pm to 7 am — more than seven hours. Thankfully, there was no emergency or fire during these periods.

The fire department officials said the incident occurred because an entire section of BSNL had been compromised, leaving a large area, including the crucial fire control lines, without connectivity Mirror also spoke to BSNL officials who said the incident on June 27 occurred due to a massive power outage at Railwaypura telephone exchange. The entire area had been badly affected and they had worked through the night to ensure that connectivity was back on track. “The second outage on July 12 occurred due to the same reason,” said Harshad Dharajiya, AGM of Enterprise for BSNL in Gujarat.

Misplaced manpower
Sources at the fire department informed Mirror that the control room is currently situated in the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation headquarters in Danapith since the AFES HQ was torn down to be reconstructed last year. It is manned by four personnel, who are mainly volunteers. In comparison, Surat fire department has a Fire Officer in charge of its control room.

This, in spite of the fact that the fire department has a Station Fire Officer who has worked for 15 years in the control room as a Fireman and then Leading Fireman, but has still not been stationed there as an officer.

STO Roopsingh Rathod, who has spent most of his career in the control room, is currently an officer without a fire station and is posted at Maninagar as an extra STO.

Sources said this officer could be posted at the control room as a supervisor just like the police control room in Ahmedabad city is headed by a Deputy Commissioner (DCP) rank officer.


Chief Fire Officer (CFO) MF Dastoor was unavailable for comment and Additional CFO Rajesh Bhatt refused to comment on the matter. Mirror spoke to Jitendra Pithwa, Communications Officer for the AFES, who said the phone lines were indeed down, “but it is a shortlived problem that will be sorted once the fire control room moves to the Smart City facility in Paldi” which is in the final phase of completion. “The lines shut down two times recently because of problems with BSNL. However, they have as-sured us that the problem has been fixed. Moreover, there should be no problem once we move to the Smart City control room in a fortnight,” said Pithwa.

Mirror also spoke to Deputy Municipal Commissioner (DyMC) Mukesh Gadhvi who is in charge of the fire department. He said, “The phone lines switching off like this is a very serious matter. It should not be happening. There should be more provisions put in place by the telecom company to make sure this doesn’t happen.”

■ IN CASE OF FIRE

If you cannot connect to 101 or 102 to get help to battle a fire, you can call your nearest fire station on the number given below:
Jamalpur: 079-25397959
Maninagar: 079-25470221
Gomtipur: 079-22776996
Naroda: 079-22200717
Panchkuva: 079-22120388
Shahpur: 079-25621969
Sabarmati: 079-27507302
Navrangpura: 079-27910203
Odhav: 079-22875434
Bodakdev: 079-29097739
Jashodanagar: 079-29097740
Aslali: 079-29097741
Thaltej: 079-26881238
Chandkheda: 079-29293222
Prahladnagar: 09426133245