This 13 year old, hailing from a small village developed a simple, low cost fire extinguisher that triggers a water motor when it senses heat. Jayakumar, wanted to focus on preventing mishaps and subduing fires before they spread, ever since his mother, a daily laborer at one of these factories, suffered serious burns during an accident.
Sivakasi is the center of the fireworks industry in TamilNadu, feeding nearly 90% of the country’s demand for fireworks. It’s also where a number of fire mishaps have occurred, leading to many casualties.
Almost 90-95% of the people in his hometown, Sivakasi, work in places where they make fireworks. These places don’t really focus much on safety, and just a few days ago, there was a fire in one of them that caused 10 people to lose their lives. Because many people’s jobs depend on these places, they have to keep working in not-so-safe conditions.
Jayakumar was born in Sivakasi and his mother, a daily laborer, earns about Rs 200 every day at a firework factory at Jaminselvarpatti in Sivakasi.
Jayakumar wanted to make a fire extinguisher that doesn’t cost much and could be used in these firecracker units. His science teacher encouraged this idea.
In an interview he mentioned, “I wanted my mother to be safe, mothers of my classmates to be safe and the society I was living in to be safe.”
After doing a lot of research online and in other ways, Jayakumar made a model fire extinguisher using things like exhaust fan, cooling fan, heat sensor, a danger LED bulb, resistors, relays, water sources, and other easy-to-find things. He showed the model to everyone.
Jayakumar’s goal was to create a big, real version of his model and put it in as many units as he could. The extinguisher has a heat sensor that detects a rise in temperature that could be caused due to friction. This triggers an alarm, which is connected to a water tank and a motor. A sprinkler that will douse the flames is activated without delay.
Jayakumar is no stranger to innovation. Before this, he created an LPG gas leak sensor using the same principle, earning him national recognition. Currently, he’s collaborating with his teacher to take the fire extinguisher model to a larger scale.
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