Delhi Fire Service is training women in JJ clusters to assist its firefighters in controlling emergency situations
Delhi Fire Service is training women in JJ clusters to assist its firefighters in controlling emergency situations
On May 26, 2020, Nargis Begam, ran for her life when a fire engulfed her JJ colony in Tughlaqabad. The fire gutted 250 shanties, including hers, and rendered over 1,000 people homeless. It still haunts the 33-year-old.
Cut to 2022. Ms. Begam is trained in basic firefighting techniques and is in a position to face such an eventually without panicking. “I enrolled myself in a training programme by Delhi Fire Service (DFS) to assist firefighters when fires break out,” she said.
She is one of the 200 women who underwent training earlier this month to learn about the reasons for fires, some basic techniques to handle such situations along with the Do’s and Don’ts of fire safety measures.
The Fire Department, BSES and Mehar Charitable Trust, an NGO, signed a Memorandum of Understanding earlier this month with an idea to create awareness and train people to control fire incidents using the available resources at home.
Upon completing the training, every woman is given a ‘Main bhi firefighter hoon’ (I too am a firefighter) certificate. The DFS has so far trained two batches of 200 women each from two JJ colonies.
“I can now teach others how to tackle such situations,” Begam says.
Prone to accidents
The LPG cylinder explosion-led fire that reduced the Tughlaqabad JJ cluster to ashes, took several hours to put out. But according to DFS Chief Atul Garg, “controlling the panic among residents was tougher.”
According to a fire officer, many JJ colonies, such as the one at Tughlakabad, are prone to blazes as the residents there store inflammable materials such as polythene and wood inside their homes. Moreover, th
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