AGARTALA, May 28 (TIWN): To increase fire fighting capabilities, the Fire Service looks set to induct 23 more well-equipped fire tenders within short period of time.
Altogether 22 most-modern fire tenders have already arrived here and one well-equipped fire tender having capacity of carrying 12,000 liters water would be arrived shortly.

In the state most of the fire tenders are back-dated as they could carry only 3000 to 5000 liters water. And they don’t facility to spray water-mist to extinguish flame in case of devastating fire incident.

However, new arrivals have the facility to disperse water-foam mixture in case of any devastating fire. In the modern fire fighting arrangement, spraying of water-foam mixture proved beneficial when it comes to effectiveness.

“Yes, we are inducting new fire fighting equipments to give more teeth to fire service personnel keeping in mind of future need, said Nepal Chandra Das, the Director of Fire Service here today.

As part of modernization plan, the Fire Service had placed an order to procure 23 fire fighting tenders before a Gujarat based manufacturing company. “Today, 22 fire tenders having good capacity of fire fighting arrived here and the big size fire tender will be coming very shortly, he said.

Not only procuring fire tenders, the Fire Service has been sending fire service personnel to different training institutes including National Fire Training Institute (NFTI), Nagpur to undergo training.

“We are, of course focusing on skill upgradation of fire service personnel to ensure effective in meeting any eventuality. And boys are going to NFTI to take modern training which proves beneficial for us”, said Das.

However, he laid emphasis on putting fire fight system place in all big size and multi-storey buildings in the capital town. Currently, the state has 35 fire stations and number of firemen stands at 1000. The state has only one hydraulic platform to extinguish flame in case of fire incident in a multi-story building. The Fire Service plans to set up nine more fire stations to strength its network effectively.