KATHMANDU, Dec 24: Figures maintained by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) show that 2,414 fire accidents took place across the country in the last one year (between December 23,  2017, and December 23, 2018) killing 87 people, damaging property worth over Rs 4 billion and affecting 3,460 families. Cases of fire incidents have increased in recent days.

On Saturday night, a resident of Rungtigadi Rural Municipality-9 of  Rolpa, Nim Prasad Pun, 50, was burnt to death after a fire broke out in his hut. An experienced firefighter claimed that a fire truck would have taken ten minutes at most to extinguish the fire. However, Rungtigadi Rural Municipality does not have a fire truck.

None of the 460 rural municipalities in Nepal and most of the municipalities have their own fire trucks. Even the capital city does not have enough of them. According to Badri Man Nagarkoti, the chief of Juddha Barun Yantra, the first firefighting unit of Nepal, there are around a dozen fire engines in the valley and this is well below the international standard of one fire truck per 28,000 people.  There are over four million temporary and permanent residents in the valley. 

 “The  fire trucks are not enough if a major fire accident  takes place in the valley,” he told Republica, “We are lucky that such a  major accident has not taken place in the valley.” He informed that in the valley, Kathmandu Metropolitan City has four fire trucks; Lalitpur and Bhaktapur have two fire trucks each; Nepal Army has three fire trucks and Nepal Police has one fire truck. The valley also uses a fire truck from the Dakshinkali Municipality during emergencies. The fire trucks from the Kathmandu Valley sometimes respond to fire incidents as far as Sindhupalchowk, Dhading, and  Nuwakot.

Nagarkoti added that the state of fire safety in the valley could be improved if the fire stations are decentralized. “It takes the fire  trucks a lot of time to travel from the centralized fire stations to  most parts of the capital,” he said, “It would be more convenient  if the fire stations were decentralized.”

While even the capital city is vulnerable in terms of fire safety, not to mention the areas outside the valley. There are only a handful of fire trucks outside the valley. 

According to the chief of firefighting unit at Bharatpur Metropolitan City, Devendra Regmi, the metropolis owns two fire engines which are not enough for its population let alone the population of other municipalities it helps.

“We  just have two fire trucks and they are not enough to cover the area,” he said, “In addition to that, we have to respond to fire accidents as far as 40 kilometers from the metropolis.” 

Meanwhile, MoHA has been limited to raising awareness to reduce fire accidents and has not been able to add fire trucks.

“We are mainly focused on raising awareness about fire safety,” MoHA spokesman Ram Krishna Subedi told Republica, “As for the control measures in  case of a fire accident; we have been promoting the use of fire  extinguishers.” MoHA has also been distributing relief packages to fire victims. 

When asked if MoHA has any plan to increase the number of fire trucks across the country, Subedi claimed that it is the responsibility of all three levels of the government to acquire more fire trucks. “With the introduction of federalism, it is high time that all three tiers of government worked responsibly toward fire safety,” he said.  He added that if all the three levels of government put in enough efforts, it will not take much time to reach the international standard for the number of fire trucks.

 
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