UP fire stations fight own emergency, beg pumps for diesel

For the last six months, neither the fire stations have got any fund for buying fuel nor their pending bills have been reimbursed. A majority are purchasing diesel on credit with the fuel bills varying from Rs 50,000 to Rs 3 lakh. The situation has got to a point where some petrol pump owners have refused to give any more fuel. “On request of fire officers, we have been lending them diesel as they are working for the society. But the pending bills have crossed the limit and it is no longer possible to fill their tanks, as no one knows when the amount will be reimbursed,” said Ashok Agarwal, owner of one of the petrol pumps in the city. Agarwal has lent diesel worth Rs 80,000 to Indiranagar Fire Station.

“It is a sorry situation to see the fire-officers begging for diesel. But we have our own limitations as well and we have helped them to extent we could manage,” added Agarwal.

Akhilesh Chandra, owner of Ranjan Petrol pump in Lucknow, told The Indian Express: “Over Rs 2.5 lakh is due from the fire department at my petrol pump. For last six months, there has been no payments from them and the amount is increasing each day.”

The situation is more or less similar is other parts of the state as well. Chief Fire Officer of the Varanasi Zone, Arun Chaturvedi, said: “In Varanasi city alone, we have around Rs 2 lakh pending to petrol pumps. In the Varanasi zone — Chandauli, Jaunpur, Gazipur, Gorakhpur, Balia, Azamgarh, Khushinagar, Mau districts — we have to pay over Rs 10 lakh. Officers are somehow managing and luckily, the petrol pump owners have not yet completely refused us here.”

An employee at a fire station in Lucknow said: “We are supposed to respond quickly to an emergency. We have been made the nodal agency for disaster management. But one has to equip us to handle these things. With a crisis of diesel and fire tenders giving an average of 2.5 km to 6 km per litre, what are we supposed to do?”

“Imagine a situation, where firemen has to say, ‘Bhaiya thora aur diesel de do, aag bujhane jana hai’ (Give us some more diesel, we have to go extinguish a fire). When one refuses, we approach another and then another. It is difficult to convince people now and begging for diesel has become embarrassing,” he added.

While the six fire stations in the state capital have already borrowed diesel worth over Rs 6 lakh, the situation is worse in other districts.

“It is an ongoing process and there is nothing wrong with the situation at present. Sometime, expenditure becomes more than expected. Then we have to write to the police headquarters, which in turn write to the government. These things take time but ultimately they (the petrol pump owners) will be paid,” said P K Rao, Deputy Director at the Fire Department Headquarters.