March.31 : BY THE time the catastrophic blaze at Kolkata’s Stephen Court, a heritage building in the heart of the city on the prestigious Park Street, had sent shock waves across the country, almost everyone had forgotten the no-less-disastrous fire at Bengaluru’s Carlton Towers exactly a month earlier. It may seem harsh to say so at this juncture but it is a safe bet that the Kolkata outrage would suffer the same fate in a matter of weeks. Does anyone remember the Dabwali conflagration in Haryana that was mind-boggling in its dimensions?
The Bengaluru blaze may have devoured fewer lives than the longer-lasting flames in West Bengal’s capital, but the frightening causes of the two tragedies were more or less identical. To expect that anyone would do, or can do in the incorrigible Indian milieu, anything about them would be a classic case of the triumph of hope over experience. Even a cursory look at the stark facts would underscore this.
At both Stephen Court and Carlton Towers many lives were lost because the poor victims could have no access to fire exits because these were all blocked. The occupants were using these as additional office space or for storage. This is not an aberration confined to these two buildings or to Kolkata and Bengaluru. It is standard practice in every metropolis, every city and even every major town where multi-storeyed monsters are sprouting up, like mushrooms after a summer shower. In Kolkata, the rescue teams that entered the building after the flames had been brought under control well past midnight found as many as 17 charred bodies in the staircase leading to the building’s terrace, obviously the best place to escape to during a fire. But the luckless people had no go: the door to the terrace was locked.
Again, this, too, was not unusual. A surprise and sample check in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai etc. would establish that the high-rise buildings’ terraces are almost always out of the reach of their inmates. In the infamous fire at Uphaar cinema in 1990s in nation’s capital, not the staircase to the terrace but a fire exit on the ground floor was locked. The case against those responsible for the virtual massacre dragged on for years, at the end of which they were let off rather lightly.
At Kolkata’s Stephen Court the state of affairs turned out to be chilling. For 64 flats — two-thirds of which are being used for commercial purposes — there is only one entrance and exit. All other entry and exit points had disappeared in the 1980s when two floors were added to the original four.
Every city and state, of course, has elaborate fire safety rules, but these are violated as flagrantly as other laws and regulations, and for exactly the same reasons. Those assigned the task of enforcing fire safety measures do not sit idle by any means. They make the necessary rounds, but are happy to receive their weekly or monthly payment and look the other way. Any building owner or occupier who obeys the rules and, therefore, refuses to pay is often harassed.
If fire safety measures are thrown to the winds, firefighting also leaves a lot to be desired, as both past experience and what happened during the two fires under discussion show. According to almost all reports, the fire at Stephen Court in Kolkata was first detected on the fourth floor at 1.45 pm. The fire brigade, only half-a-kilometre away, was notified 15 minutes later. The first batch of fire tenders arrived at 2.35 pm but did not have ladders or hydraulic water jets that could reach the fourth floor. Another hour passed before tenders with the requisite equipment reached but they could become operational only half-an-hour later.
In Bengaluru, there was inexplicable delay in informing the fire brigade about the blaze. The first fire engine came from seven kilometres away but by the time it arrived it could not reach the burning building because a huge crowd — yet another unavoidable hazard at the time of a disaster, man-made or natural — had collected. The police had to work hard to make way for fire fighters. Moreover, here also the fire services were found lacking in the necessary equipment and skills. There is nothing to show that at a time when the Indian system cannot muster reasonably effective bullet-proof jackets for fighters against terrorism, it would act immediately and energetically to make good the deficiencies in fire fighting services across the country.
The cruellest twist to the tragic tale is that only after the havoc wrought by the fire the Left Front ministry in West Bengal discovered that the two floors added to Stephen Court in 1980s were “illegal”. The Communist Party of India-Marxist state government has been in power uninterruptedly since 1977. Did it not know then what was going on? And is it so naïve as to believe that apart from these two floors no illegal construction has gone on in the sprawling city during the last 30 years? Regardless, the state chief minister has thundered that those who allowed the illegal construction at Stephen Court would be punished. To nobody’s surprise, the civic authorities have blandly informed him that the files relating to the construction he has at last taken note of are untraceable. “Found missing” is the appropriate official jargon. One can be sure that if these files were not destroyed earlier, they must have been by now. Also, any simpleton would know that municipal and other officials who took bribes to allow illegal addition of two floors would have retired by now.
In all fairness it must be added that the Central government is no less tolerant of massive illegal constructions than are governments in the states, which is a measure of the builder mafia’s clout and the venality of the politico-bureaucratic structure. Did not the Union government beat a hasty retreat after taking only limited action against unlawful constructions in Delhi only a few years ago?
Is it any surprise, therefore, that most, if not almost all, high-rise buildings could become potential towering infernos?
Inder Malhotra
