Blogs

The incident took place at the Varroc Lighting Systems’ Pune plant that supplies to key vehicle manufacturers such as Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd (M&M), Volvo Eicher Commercial Vehicles Ltd (VECV), Skoda Auto Volkswagen India Pvt Ltd and others.

The fire broke out outside the manufacturing block and spread to the packaging area. Reportedly, it started at 3.15 am and spread rapidly since there were plenty of inflammable material —several automobile parts like head and tail lights, silicon fluids, chemicals, thinners and plastic, among others — at the plant. Over a 130 people were present when the fire broke out. All of them were evacuated safely, but one person sustained minor burns.

Figure 1- Varroc Lighting, that supplies exterior vehicle lighting systems to several automobile manufacturers suffered a massive fire in the early hours of February 18, 2020

Image Source- https://images.indianexpress.com/2020/02/fire-3.jpg

According to the MIDC Fire Brigade official Mr. S. T. Ingavale, the best efforts were put into by brigade personnel, who used 12 fire engines and 20 water tankers. Fire brigade units of PMRDA, MIDC, Pune Municipal Corporation, and Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation summoned to douse the massive fire. It took almost 10 hours and co-ordinated efforts of all these fire fighting units to douse the fire, which was spread across the eight-acre plant. Though the primary reason for the fire is known to be short circuit, it was indeed surprising that why it required these many numbers of fire-fighting units from several municipal bodies?

Fire extinguishers are provided for a ‘first attack’ fire fighting measure, generally undertaken by the occupants of the building before the fire service arrives. It is important that occupants are familiar with which extinguisher type to use on which fire. Most fires start as a small fire and may be extinguished if the correct type and amount of extinguishing agent is applied whilst the fire is small and controllable.

Aarush Fire Systems Pvt. Ltd not only provides training pertaining to this but also fire fighting systems and equipment. It contains some or all of the following systems and equipments like fire extinguishers, fire hose reels, fire hydrant systems, foam systems and automatic sprinkler systems, among others. These systems help to douse the inferno fast and resist it to spread. This eventually helps the manufactures to contain the damage with ease and recover the operations swiftly.