However, firefighting technology, whether old or new, cannot itself make where we live or work safer. In fact, more than fire-safety equipment what matters is the public's awareness about fire hazard and their preparedness to use the technology, first, to prevent fire incidents from happening and, then, to fight whenever those break out. More importantly, owners and builders of official and residential quarters will be required to strictly go by the building codes so that firefighting devices are properly installed and firefighters have easy access to the business or residential complexes as soon as any incident of fire occurs. According to the Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defence (BFSCD), last year (2023), some 27,624 fire incidents took place across the country. Going by the BFSCD statistics, the causes of the fires in most cases, were electric short circuit, burning cigarette butts, oven fire, gas pipe leakage, etc. Evidently, all these causes behind the reported fires were preventable, if only the people who lived or worked in the buildings that caught fire were more aware about fire hazards. In that case, the lives of more than 100 of those reported fire victims could be saved and the damage to different types of property worth over Tk 7.92 billion could be avoided. Unfortunately, last year, for instance, within less than two weeks, four big fires broke out. Those include fires at Bangabazar market, New Super Market, Uttara BGB Market and Baitul Mukarram jewellery market. To contain those conflagrations, units of the army and the navy had to take part in addition to the fire brigade. In the first two fires at Bangabazar and New Super Market property worth Tk5.0 billion was reportedly destroyed. But the scale of the devastations cannot be measured solely in terms of money. Consider the misfortune of the owners of the small and big shops, mostly dealing in cloth, who invested their entire lifetime and resources in establishing their business. But everything went up in smoke in a flash. Apart from the losses to life and property, has anyone kept count of the people and their families who have fallen on hard times following those calamitous fires? As the probe reports following such fires usually go, the possible causes, though the exact origins of the fires are hardly ever found out, are, as noted in the foregoing, are short circuit, gas leakage, burning cigarettes and so on. When it comes to the efforts of the firefighters to douse the fires, the problems they often face is the narrowness of the passages through which their vehicles might pass or even the individual firefighters move. The builders and owners of the building complexes are mainly to blame for limited accessibility to such vulnerable building complexes like shopping malls. The high death tolls in the case of past factory fires, especially at the garment factories and other labour-intensive workplaces, it was often found that many factory buildings had no emergency fire exits. The passages through which the trapped and panicked workers could run to safety were too narrow causing stampede resulting in casualties. Worse, the exit doors for strange reasons remained locked further escalating the scale of the tragedy. It is clear from such cases that it is not the availability or the lack of fire extinguishing devices as such or of how modern or old they are; it is largely the lapses originating in human frailty that are responsible for fire tragedies.
So, the lapses whether out of mindlessness or intended, require serious attention for concerned quarters. The application of law in such cases should be exemplary so that no one would dare repeat it in the future. In the cases of high-rise buildings of complexes, no comprise on the Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC), 2020, should be allowed. The different articles/parts of the Code have dealt with the preventive, protective and precautionary measures to be taken to minimise the danger to life from fire, smoke, fumes, etc., caused by fire. Important fire safety provisions include, for instance, construction of the buildings with fire resistance materials which can control the spread of fire. Also, the Code requires that the buildings so constructed should be equipped with detection and alarm systems that can detect the incidence of heat, smoke and fire at any point of a building and instantly alert its occupants. The Code further requires the buildings to have multiple routes to escape to enable occupants to use them for quick exit in case of a fire. The requirements as spelt out in the Code also include installation of fire-extinguishers of different types, smoke management systems and most importantly, the mandate that the building owners and occupants must conduct regular fire drills and training sessions. Obviously, the last provision is about building the culture of preparedness against fire among the occupants of a building.
In fact, including BNBC, there are a plethora of Acts like Fire Prevention and Extinguishing Act, 2003, the Fire Prevention and Extinction Rules, 2014, etc.
But as the mere existence of many pieces of firefighting equipment in a building cannot stop fire from happening, so cannot the laws, if they are just on paper. They need to be applied to protect people and punish those who fall afoul of them.
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