After three days of the devastating crane accident in Maharaja Bada, many aspects of mismanagement and incompetence in the Gwalior fire department have come to light.
In the accident caused by negligence, three employees of the Gwalior Municipal Corporation who were part of the fire department were killed and one was seriously injured.
The injured person is fighting for his life here in the state hospital. The accident happened when employees were putting up the national flag on the historic post office building in Bada.
The preliminary investigation of the accident has shown that only 30% of the fire brigade’s staff have been trained to deal with emergencies. Even the crane operators are not trained in handling such complicated vehicles. According to experts, the crane should only be rotated 20 degrees, but it was found that the crane was rotated 28 degrees in the accident.
According to many fire department employees, they are not even given the correct uniforms. Some of them even claimed that there was a high level of corruption when purchasing the cranes, which is why the quality of the cranes used by the fire service is below average. However, there is no evidence of this charge.
The staff also pointed out the lack of proper safety equipment.
The fire department in Maharaja Bada is very old and, according to the staff and local residents, could collapse any day. When asked, authorities told Gwalior Municipal Corporation that the newly appointed Deputy City Commissioner Ashish Tiwari would conduct a thorough investigation to clarify responsibility and remedy the situation. In the meantime, the outgoing deputy community commissioner Mukul Gupta handed over a sum of Rs 4 lakh each to the relatives of the deceased.
