Fire at WASA Bhaban

Smoke frighteningly coming out from all floors of WASA Bhaban

WASA officials, employees and others who were trapped in the inferno were lucky, for the fire did not spread. It was the dense black smoke that engulfed the entirety of the building forcing the desperate men and women to take shelter on the balconies. The thick smoke billowed from the basement through the 'abandoned' lift shaft running up to the roof of the building. Abandoned for years, the shaft became a dumping place for the WASA employees throughout the building. Somehow on the fateful day the tons of accumulated rubbish were ignited with ferocity. As thick smoke engulfed the whole building, nobody could see the source of the fire. The only staircase and the corridors became totally inaccessible with darkness and deadly fumes. It was not after an hour that the fire brigade could pinpoint the source and douse it with water, much of which came from rainwater cumulating at a nearby excavation of a construction site.

The terrified men and women were there, desperately urging thousands of onlookers on the streets to help them escape the fire. One elderly man stood alone near the window of the sixth floor and crossed his hands around his chest in desperation and asked the crowd below what he should do. Syed Quamrul Hasan, the Superintendent Engineer of WASA was on the balcony of the eighth floor with some of his colleagues. Hasan and his colleagues showed some calmness urging other colleagues on the road below to do something quickly. But there were others who were not so calm. Some even tried to jump and some found ropes provided by Samaritan rescuers to descend on the ground.

The WASA fire could have become a terrible disaster had the fire escaped from the elevator shaft and engulfed the rooms packed with piles of files shelved in several offices in the building.

Throughout the city several hundred high-rise residential and commercial buildings have mushroomed within the last decade. Interestingly, most of these buildings have been constructed without the slightest concern about fire hazard. According to fire fighters, in case of a fire, which can occur any moment, these are deadly traps for both occupants and people in the neighbourhood.

"We are unable to make people in the tall buildings realise that if a fire breaks out, most would just perish because the only exit would be dark and blanketed with deadly smoke," said a senior fire fighter requesting not to be named.

Sources said that the fire service is inadequately equipped to tackle high-rise fire in the city. One of the two snorkel ladders is almost always out of order. And the one with an aerial platform is often 'taken away' by the state run Bangladesh Television for covering various political and cultural events in the city. They said that if there is a fire in any high-rise buildings at the time of such BTV act, fatalities would be much more as the fire fighters do not have any other equipment to rescue people from tall buildings.

Although the fire service has to issue a clearance certificate to every high-rise building prior to approval of its plan, but it is never issued on the basis of inspection after the completion of the structure.

"The clearance certificate is issued on the basis of the proposed plan of the building, which is usually drawn in line with all existing guidelines," said a fire service official, " but when the building is completed, nothing concerning fire protection is built."

Experts said any building above four stories must have provision for in-house protection from fire, such as fire extinguishers, fire drills among its occupants and additional staircase for fire exits.

Nowadays, acts of sabotage and terrorism are occurring at an alarming frequency, we have to be prepared for the unexpected otherwise greater loss of lives becomes inevitable.

Morshed Ali Khan is Special Correspondent of The Daily Star.