Teams of inspectors from different fire stations will visit rooftop cafes, restaurants and bars across the city to check compliance with fire-fighting norms, sources in the fire and emergency department said.

The department has prepared a list of 80 such establishments.

The teams will check various aspects of firefighting preparedness like capacity to store water, condition of the downcomer system (an internal fire hydrant system that delivers water from rooftop storage), conditions of the staircases, sprinklers and fire alarms.

“Contrary to the norm, the teams will turn up without prior intimation to the managers or owners, and run a check of the firefighting measures in place. After the visits, they will draw up detailed reports on each of the establishments. The exercise will be completed within a week,” a senior officer of the fire and emergency services department said.

The inspections are scheduled to start from this week, said sources.

The move follows a meeting of senior fire and emergency services officials with their counterparts in Kolkata Police on May 2.

It was decided that both the agencies would run separate checks of the fire preparedness of these rooftop hangouts and draw up reports.

The reports will be submitted to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) for necessary action.

“Police will check the validity of different licenses, while the fire and emergency services department will
examine the fire preparedness at these commercial units,” the officer said.

“Once the visits are done, we will review the reports and draw up the recommendations for ensuring fire safety at these commercial units.”

Several inspectors said that besides checking the firefighting preparedness, the visits will help identify whether some of these commercial units have built additional structures after obtaining no-objection certificates (NOC) from the department.

“Some commercial units take steps to comply with the recommendations of the fire and emergency services department to get an NOC. But subsequently, they often modify the structures without informing us,” said an officer of the north Calcutta division.

“Emergency exits, for instance, are often used to dump waste materials and structural changes are made to add space at times,” said the officer.