Mumbai: For Mumbai’s fire brigade, Diwali 2026 was unlike any other in recent memory.With nearly 500 fire calls reported during the festival period from Nov 6 to 10, including around 333 linked to firecrackers, firefighters found themselves rushing from one emergency to another, often with little time to return to their stations.Senior fire officers, several of whom have spent over two decades in the department, told TOI that they had rarely witnessed such an intense spell of firefighting operations. The pressure was particularly acute on Nov 8-9, when the brigade received 142 and 166 calls respectively, most of which were attributed to firecrackers.For Deputy Chief Fire Officer S D Sawant, the day was also his birthday. He was having dinner with his family when he was summoned to the fire brigade control room. What was initially a day off soon turned into a prolonged firefighting operation at Dongri, where a major blaze had broken out. Sawant, who supervised the Dongri operation, said 12 fire engines were eventually deployed.“The priority was to prevent the blaze from spreading to adjoining residential buildings, particularly on the northern and western sides of the affected premises. As the operation continued, fresh fire calls came in from Vidyavihar, Jogeshwari and other parts of the city,” said Sawant.Divisional Fire Officer Umesh Palande, who has served in the brigade for 26 years, said some fire engines that had left their stations around 11 pm returned only around 11 am the following day.“In several instances, fire teams travelling between major emergencies also stopped to tackle smaller fires they spotted along the way, rather than leave them unattended until another team could arrive. Some have even attempted to douse fires at their homes themselves and not called the fire brigade, we found,” said Palande.Deputy Chief Fire Officer Deepak Ghosh said that apart from fire engines not getting time to return to their respective fire stations, refilling them could have turned out to be another challenge. “A fire engine carries only around 4,500 litres of water, and it cannot attend another emergency without adequate water. To overcome the problem, what we did is that the already deployed water tankers with a capacity of around 16,000 litres at fire sites were used to replenish the fire engines’ water supply while firefighting operations were underway. As soon as the water in a fire engine was exhausted, the tanker would refill it even as the firefighting operation continued. This ensured that the fire engine remained supplied with water and flames could be doused. It also meant that when the engine had to move to another location, it had sufficient water for the next operation,” Ghosh explained.Palande also said rockets and other aerial fireworks posed a particular danger to high-rise buildings, which Mumbai didn’t have in such large numbers in the past. “Now there’s a high-rise in every corner of Mumbai. Rockets can reach floors as high as even the 22nd, enter apartments through open windows and ignite curtains or other combustible material. This can be a major scare for the residents living in it. Firefighters have also encountered residents attempting to douse fires themselves after crackers landed inside their homes.”Chief Fire Officer Ravindra Ambulgekar said, “We tried our very best to ensure that there wasn’t any casualty in every call our team attended. However, we can definitely say that this Diwali’s fire calls weren’t anything like we have visited in the past.”(Ends)
