from www.thestar.com.my
Monday, October 30, 2000
Auditor-General Report
Fire engines late in arriving most of the time
By Foo Yee Ping, Lee Yuk Peng and Sim Leoi Leoi
FIRE engines fail to reach the scene of a fire on time in up to 86% of the cases.
The findings are based on an audit conducted on 12 fire stations located in cities, five in the suburbs and eight in rural areas.
According to the report, fire stations are classified under international guidelines according to their locations within a city, urban or rural areas.
"For cities, the fire engines are required to reach the place of fire within five minutes of receiving the call.
"In the suburbs, they should reach in five to eight minutes, and within eight to 10 minutes in the rural areas.
"However, fire engines did not reach their destinations within the norm specified between 50% and 86% of the time,'' the report said.
"Such delays have affected the department's effectiveness in responding to and combating fire emergencies.
"Their failure can cause increases in property losses and the lives lost,'' it said.
The report blamed the insufficient number of stations serving an area, traffic jams and poor road access for the delays.
"Although distance is also a factor, trucks in city stations could not arrive within five minutes, even when the place of fire was less than 5km away. "This means that traffic congestion, especially that resulting from massive construction and rapid development, is an influencing factor,'' it stated. Other woes were narrow, winding roads and those which could not sustain the weight of a fire engine.
"A check on 160 fire stations also showed that 146 did not have the required number of fire trucks for each station, as specified under guidelines.
"Sixty-five per cent of the 160 stations only had one fire truck,'' it said, adding that as at May 15 last year, the country only had 409 fire trucks. Of that number, 264 or 64.55% were more than 10 years old.
The report said that it was due to the fact that the department only received RM110mil under the Seventh Malaysia Plan to purchase fire trucks, when it actually needed RM461.55mil.
Out of 111 fire stations checked, the report said 105 did not have the required number of six walkie-talkies while another six had no such equipment.
The report stated that there were as many as 1,541 damaged fire hydrants and no action had been taken to repair them.