A day after a car caught fire in the southbound Coastal Road tunnel causing panic among commuters, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) started an awareness campaign on Thursday, highlighting in detail for the first time in two years since the Coastal Road became operational in March 2024, protocols, safety measures, and details about how to get help and behave inside the tunnel in case of an emergency event (fire, blast, or waterlogging).

Emergency guidelines

On Thursday, the BMC issued a 12-point list of guidelines for Mumbaikars, following an analysis of the lessons learnt from Wednesday’s fire incident. The guideline follows the availability of six measures inside the tunnel to ensure commute safety, including a Public Address System (PAS), cross passages at every 300 metres which can act as escape routes in case of a disaster, availability fire extinguishers due to lack of immediate fire safety measures such as sprinklers, display of telephone systems at every 100 metres to ask for help, CCTV cameras for monitoring smoke, a rise in temperature, and any other anomaly. These systems are monitored by a control room that operates round the clock.