This is the time of the year when the air is hot and dry. So, it is the perfect time for fire incidents. But as always, the awareness level of the public about possible fire mishaps remains as low as ever. The inevitable as a result happens. The fire service and civil defence as well as the two city corporation authorities did earlier declare that they would launch a drive to check if the city's buildings are maintaining the necessary fire-related and others safety protocols. Obviously, the fire department's collaborative move has seemingly been prompted by last week's (February 19's, to be particular) fire accident at a 14-storey apartment building in an affluent neighbourhood of the city, Gulshan. When this write-up was in progress, another report of fire came from the city's biggest slum, the so-called Korail basti, where a fire started at around 4:30 in the afternoon of Sunday and thanks to the timely intervention of the fire service team, the blaze could be brought under control without any report of casualties.
However, slums are outside the purview of the fire service department's drive. So far as reports go, a day after the last week's Gulshan apartment fire that led two persons to jump to death from the high-rise, high officials of the fire service department visited the building that caught fire. Of the various safety flaws they could detect, the one that was striking was the lack of 'fire safety plan for the multistorey apartment. The building owner, however, could show a 'no objection certificate' from the appropriate authorities. It, however, would be an exercise in semantics to determine exactly where the fine line between the two kinds of certificates lies. For a question still remains unanswered. It is that the building owner could get away with the faulty, or even worse, non-existent fire safety clearance certificate and construct such a huge residential apartment complex under their (the fire service department's) very nose!
And if the fire safety norms are so lax in such a wealthy district of the city, then what can one expect from the poorer quarters? The incident of 2019's Churihatta fire in Chowkbazar of the old Dhaka that took 71 lives has not yet faded from memory. Flammable chemical substances stored in the building triggered the devastating fire. There was yet another conflagration in 2010 at Nimtoli in Old Dhaka that claimed 124 lives. Again, chemicals for perfumery stored in shops helped the fire to engulf the entire area. But have those locations been cleared of the combustible chemicals including plastic factories as promised by the government at that time?
The Gulshan fire may have been a wakeup call for the fire service and other authorities related to building construction in the city. What are they supposed to do? The members of the inspection team from the fire service and civil defence will be looking into issues like if the buildings have required fire safety measures in place, if the fire exits are wide enough and, perhaps, if the occupants of the buildings are duly responsive to the fire alarms. They will also see if the buildings are earthquake-resistant. The Rajuk will look into if building codes have been maintained. The defaulters would face penal measures. The drive at a point will be put off. The public and, maybe, the enforcement authorities, too, will forget about the issue. Then there will be another spurt of activity when, God forbid, another report of a major fire mishap comes.
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