Balconies can’t be death traps

Pushpa Girimaji

Last year, a friend died under very tragic circumstances during a party hosted by him to celebrate the New Year. While the celebrations were on, he got a phone call and so he went out into the balcony to take the call. While doing so, he tripped over an electric wire, fell off from the balcony and died. Later we discovered that the balcony walls of all the houses in the apartment complex, including his, were very short. Can his wife file a case against the builder, holding him accountable for the death of her husband?

Yes, she can approach the consumer court seeking compensation from the builder who built the balcony wall and the civic authority that is supposed to check these safety parameters before giving the completion certificate to a building. A balcony wall is meant to prevent accidental fall and, in this case, the wall did not fulfil the criteria. So, both the builder and the civic authority should be held liable for the tragedy.

The National Building Code 2016, drawn up by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), stipulates that the balcony walls or guard rails should not be less than one metre (3.28 feet) in height. ‘Parapet walls and handrails provided on the edges of roof terraces, balcony, veranda, etc. shall not be less than 1 meter and not more than 1.2m in height from the finished floor level’, it says. 

State governments may have their own building code. The Haryana Building Code 2017, for example, defines a ‘parapet’ as a low wall built along the edge of a roof or a floor not more than 1.2m in height for buildings up to 15m and 1.5m for buildings above 15m.

Please find out when was the apartment complex built and the building code at that time. Failure on the part of the builder to comply with the law will strengthen the complaint. Having said that, I would urge all those living in that complex to take the builder to task and ensure that the balconies are rendered safe.

What steps could be taken to prevent such accidents?

First of all, I would advise all those living in a high-rise apartment or on any floor above the ground level to check the balcony walls and railings to see if they are tall enough to prevent an accidental fall. I would suggest similar checks on the terrace wall too. You also need to make sure that the guard rails do not have gaps that are large enough for a child to slip through or have climbable rails on which a child can climb, resulting in a fatal fall.

On January 1 this year, an engineer fell to his death from the fifth floor balcony of his flat in Noida while celebrating New Year. On the first day of 2018 too, a party turned tragic when the host, a 32-year-old resident of Gurgaon, fell from the balcony of his house. A few months later, in March, a resident of Shahimajra village in Mohali met a similar fate. His friend tried to save him but he too fell down and sustained serious injuries.

There have also been a number of cases of children falling through the gaps in the balcony railings. In August last year, a 15-month-old child fell through one such gap in the balcony railing on the tenth floor of her house in Greater Noida. In June, a toddler slipped through the space in the balcony grill of his second floor house in Sector 26, Chandigarh. A year before that, a three year old girl in Pune met the same fate. 

It is absolutely essential to ensure that the balcony grills are safe in all respects. The guardrail balusters, for example, should not be too far apart. In fact, the distance between the railings should not be more than 10cm. Similarly, the balcony railings should not have horizontal grills or enclosures that allow a child to use them as steps to climb up. It is equally important to ensure that there is no gap between the balcony floor and the first grill, as a child could easily slip through the space.

Civic authorities should formulate detailed safety regulations for balconies, publicise them and ensure that they are strictly complied with.