In brief: Fire kills around sixteen people in India every single day — and almost every one of those deaths is preventable. The law already requires your workplace to be prepared; most aren’t. This is what the first five minutes of a fire decide, and how to make sure your people know what to do with them.
Reference: NISSMAT maintains the India Fire Incident Registry — a source-verified, continuously updated record of major fire incidents in India since 2020, free to cite with attribution.
How many people die in fires in India?
India recorded 5,971 fire accidents in 2024, killing 5,888 people — an average of sixteen deaths every day, according to NCRB accident data. The long-term trend is improving (2015 saw over 17,700 deaths), but the number remains staggering for a category of accident that safety professionals consider overwhelmingly preventable.
Just before the start of the pandemic, India was rocked by high-profile fire incidents. A fire in a Delhi factory killed more than 45 workers — migrant labourers who were sleeping inside a four-storey building with no escape route. In May 2019, 22 young students died in a blaze at a coaching centre in Surat caused by an electrical short-circuit, in a makeshift centre on the third floor.
We talk of developing smart cities in India — without realising the essential requirements of fire safety measures.
Why do workplace fires turn fatal?
Small fires are caused by little overlooks resulting in big conflagrations and loss of property and life. Ignorance about fire hazards, negligence and non-adherence to legal requirements and building codes are the recurring factors, and the pattern repeats across residences, offices and workplaces: open flames used carelessly indoors, overheated cooking oil, combustible material stored casually, welding and cutting done without precautions, electrical equipment never maintained.
The quickness of action in case of fire is what matters most. Small fires can be extinguished immediately; the delay in action can be disastrous. That is why the basics — smoke detectors, automatic fire alarms, maintained extinguishers, sprinkler systems, stored water, and people who actually know the do’s and don’ts (never use the lift; close doors and windows when leaving the fire zone; never switch on the exhaust fan) — decide outcomes long before the fire brigade arrives.
Can the fire brigade reach you in time?
India’s fire services fight heroically with limited resources. The capital illustrates the arithmetic: Delhi needs around 108 fire stations for its population and area, but operates 71, and nearly 80% of its sanctioned fire station officer posts are vacant — while the service fields close to a hundred emergency calls a day.
The honest conclusion for any building owner or manager: the first minutes of a fire belong to the people inside the building, not to the fire brigade. Whether those minutes are used well — a correct extinguisher, deployed correctly, and a calm, rehearsed evacuation — is entirely a matter of preparation.
What does the law require of Indian workplaces?
Fire safety in India is governed by state Fire Services Acts and the National Building Code (NBC 2016, Part 4 — Fire & Life Safety). In practical terms, most non-residential buildings and taller residential buildings require a valid Fire NOC, and commercial establishments are expected to conduct fire training and evacuation drills every six months — every three months for high-risk premises.
Non-compliance is not a paperwork problem. Under the Delhi Fire Prevention and Fire Safety Act, failure to obtain or renew a Fire NOC can attract a fine up to ₹1,00,000 and the sealing of the building; Maharashtra’s law provides for fines up to ₹50,000, imprisonment up to one year, and ₹500 per day for continuing violations. For schools, CBSE and state boards require documented fire safety drills annually.
What is a fire risk assessment — and does yours say anything?
The aim of any fire risk assessment is to identify fire hazards and risks so that adequate precautions can be taken to reduce them. A good assessment evaluates whether reasonable safety measures are in place, whether legal requirements and building norms are followed, whether staff have been adequately trained, and whether coordination between levels actually works.
Crucially, an honest assessment states plainly that despite the laid-down fire safety plan, loopholes and hazards remain — and names them. An assessment that finds nothing wrong is usually an assessment that wasn’t looking. Expired extinguishers, blocked escape routes, missing exit signage and undocumented drills are the findings that appear again and again wherever inspectors genuinely look.
What should every employee be able to do?
Four things, none of which can be learned from a poster on the day of the fire:
- Identify the class of fire and select the correct extinguisher for it — in India every extinguisher body is red; it is the label band that tells you what it fights, a detail most people learn only in training;
- Operate an extinguisher correctly using the PASS technique — Pull, Aim, Squeeze, Sweep — and know the fatal mistakes to avoid;
- Evacuate with discipline — routes, assembly points, headcounts, and the rules that save lives (no lifts, doors closed behind you);
- Treat drills seriously — a drill conducted casually documents compliance and teaches nothing.
All citizens should understand their responsibility: fire safety is not the government’s job alone. Workers and managers must ensure safety, and building bylaws must be strictly complied with.
Who governs fire safety in India?
Fire safety in India sits with several bodies, and knowing who does what helps organisations navigate compliance. The Directorate General Fire Services, Civil Defence & Home Guards (Ministry of Home Affairs) sets national direction, while firefighting itself is a state and municipal function under each state’s Fire Services Act. Technical standards come from the National Building Code of India 2016 (Part 4 — Fire & Life Safety). Professional firefighters train at the National Fire Service College, Nagpur.
Industry coordination runs through the Fire & Security Association of India (FSAI) — a non-profit established in 2002 representing the fire protection, life safety, security and risk-management industries, with more than two dozen chapters across India and the UAE. Specialist institutes such as the International Institute of Security & Safety Management (IISSM), established in 1992, run multi-day practitioner courses in fire and loss-prevention management. NISSMAT’s own contribution sits alongside this ecosystem: whole-workforce preparedness — because codes, colleges and associations cannot pull the pin on an extinguisher for the person standing in front of the fire.
This is the gap the NISSMAT Academy Executive Fire Safety Course (P1) was built to close: a half-day, on-site programme in which every participant handles a live extinguisher and the whole building rehearses a real evacuation. NISSMAT’s work on fire safety draws on practitioners like Abhilash Kumar Malik, Deputy Chief Fire Officer of the Delhi Fire Services and a President’s Fire Service Medal awardee, who addressed our Speakers Forum on precisely this subject.
Sources: NCRB Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India (ADSI); Factly analysis of NCRB 2024 data; ThePrint and Newslaundry reporting on Delhi Fire Services capacity; Delhi Fire Prevention & Fire Safety Act; Maharashtra Fire Prevention & Life Safety Measures Act, 2006; National Building Code of India 2016, Part 4; fsai.in; iissm.in; DGFSCD&HG.