The Jharkhand fire service department on Tuesday took a big leap in blaze battle with chief minister Raghubar Das flagging off 42 new fire tenders from the Home Guard Training Institute in Dhurwa.

The fleet, which includes 14 big tenders, same number of water tanks and small tenders, were procured from Tata Motors about a year ago.

Speaking to The Telegraph on the occasion, fire and Home Guard director-general Asha Sinha said the tenders would be distributed among all the districts. "The state now has an additional fleet that will come handy in fighting flames," she added.

An official of the department that the small tenders would boost fire-fighting measures. "Given the way colonies are mushrooming, small fire tenders are the need of the hour to enter narrow lanes. For instance, if there is a fire at areas like Upper Bazaar and Chutia in Ranchi, only small fire tenders will be able to make their way into the congested neighbourhoods," the official added.

He even cited an incident when firefighters had to face lot of difficulties to reach the spot. On May 8, Priyanka Fabrics - a cloth wholesaler located near Gandhi Chowk in Upper Bazaar - was gutted in a fire caused by short circuit. Properties worth over lakhs were damaged. Though the fire department had immediately swung into action, it took over an hour to make inroads into the area due to narrow lanes and heavy traffic.

Addressing the gathering, chief minister Das said in the next two years, his government would ensure that there was at least one fire station at every block.

Currently, Jharkhand has 31 fire stations, but the number is not adequate, say officials. Rough estimate suggests that the state needs around 120 more fire stations.

Jolted out of slumber by the 2011 AMRI disaster in Calcutta, the state government had sanctioned about a dozen fire stations. Unfortunately, the proposal is still gathering dust due to land crunch.

"We had asked all the deputy commissioners to scout for plots, but nothing has happened yet," said an insider.