Lessons from the rubble

A large number of the garment factories in the city operate in flagrant violation of building rules and safety. They are almost like ticking time-bombs waiting for things to go wrong. First of all, many of these factories are established within existing residential or other previously constructed buildings. These hardly meet the health and safety requirements of the new use. What is more alarming is the fact that, in the absence of dedicated structural designers in the country, general practicing civil engineers take on the task of adapting the old structures to the new live and dead loads.

In most cases, proper as-built drawings are hardly ever present, and the rule of thumb solution based on a working stress design rather than on ultimate load, banks for its success on an overly done safety margin. This increases the cost of construction and owners try to recover some of that by building beyond the recommendations of the civil engineers. In most cases this works because the safety margin holds and they get away with it, the result is however, much more disastrous because even if the building does not collapse, largely unsafe and precarious structures become an ever growing threat in the long term to the city dwellers.

Most structural designers perhaps predict that under a reasonably strong earthquake almost 70 percent of the city's buildings would go down. Therefore, when we are dealing with human lives, such a public attitude and practice is hardly desirable. One thing that stands in the way is the political machinations by powerful technocratic circles in preventing the adoption of stringent registration standards or quality control of professional services. Neither is there an appropriate legal apparatus, nor is there adequate quality of professional services to bring to book violations of structural design. Quite amazingly in this day and age, when there are no such assurances available, the public clings on to an invisible "BUET" standard, which practically means nothing.

Besides structural issues, the second major threat to these garment factories is fire hazard. Even though this has fed popular media outcry for some time in the wake of several fire disasters in the city, nothing useful has come out of it. Unfortunate but true, most architects in our country seem to be of the opinion that in the time of fire the only strategy is to run for your life, and therefore, all a building needs is a fire stair and exit door. Even though the simple rationality of the idea seems obvious, it is not totally correct. Fire-fighting in a building usually comes in three steps: precautions and safety measures to prevent the cause and spread of fire, management of the fire in containing it and evacuating the building occupants properly to safety, and finally to douse the fire and prevent damage to property. So it is quite obvious that the designer's task does not start and end at having fire exit doors and a stairway installed.

Modern fire-fighting techniques within a building are more or less an established science and we have a lot to learn. Even at the design phase it takes into consideration the building and interior materials based on fire rating. Fire rating, in a broadly simplified term, establishes the combustible character of any building material in terms of how long it can withstand and prevent the spread of fire before its collapse. Fortunately, the fire rating of concrete and brick that are typically used in our country as construction materials can withstand fire for quite long. But then, many interior materials do not, and some elements such as clothing can quickly spread fire in an interior. This is of critical importance as a rapidly spreading fire and fumes can suffocate and often block the passage to evacuation and the fire exit door or the stair can become absolutely useless.

Secondly, fire management takes into account the typical travel distance from the place of work to the nearest exit door in case of an emergency. Having a long and tortuous journey during a panic from fire almost inevitably means a disaster. Exit routes are therefore designed and placed within close reach. These are in most cases standardised, so that workers can quickly reach them in an emergency. Fire management also demands that people are previously oriented and trained how to evacuate a building in a systematic manner or else the inevitable result occurs that people panic and cause more harm by randomly running around in a stampede than by suffocating or actually catching fire. It is not hard to recognize the importance of this fact if we critically examine some of the past instances of fire and the principal causes of death. Fire drills at regular intervals and fire safety tools such as extinguishers within easy reach, coupled with fire alarms, are therefore essential to fire management in a building. Having said that, the necessity of designing electrical wiring in the interior is also another aspect that needs to be addressed. Any designer conscious of fire hazards not only needs to keep a close eye on electrical wiring within the building, but also needs to have fire alarms and indicators placed at every vital junction. I am afraid a majority of the garment factory buildings hardly ever consider these issues at the architectural design phase, largely because of a perception that having an exit door and a stair is all that is needed. What a terrible mistake this can sometimes be.

Besides giving consideration to proper structural design and architectural fire management needs, the third major concern I would like to bring forth is for garment workers' safety in terms of indoor air quality. A large number of factories provide working conditions in which suspended fibres and synthetic materials float in the air. Many of these airborne particles and fibres have severe health implications. Addressing indoor air quality has become an essential issue, with interior designers and architects closely involved with delivery of safe interiors today. Unfortunately, this trend has not entered into the mainstream practice in our country. Not only in terms of safety, but also in delivering optimum working conditions for the workers, it is necessary that garment factories are designed by competent professionals and commissioned by responsible owners. I am sure that the owner of Spectrum garments has had many wakeful nights and found himself at the receiving end of public and media outrage for his gross negligence, but I find it hard to blame only this single pitiful soul. It is our social attitude to disregard for public safety and the nature of the public apparatus to allow this status quo to exist that is to blame. I cannot even start to think of the proportions of the loss that has occurred at this disaster. Some things cannot simply be measured by a dollar figure, but I am sure the cost of having a competent design for a safe building would have had been much less. The greatest thing we can achieve from a disaster is an understanding and preparedness to prevent the next one.

In conclusion, I don't waste my ink with the expectation that our public institutions would wake up at this time, but I expect our second generation of educated Bangladeshis and newly rich entrepreneurs to bring a change to their attitude and think twice about what is at stake and what is a prudent choice to make the next time they walk into their humming factories teeming with workers. A brand shirt that sells for seventy dollars hardly makes the garment worker any more than thirty cents. The least these workers deserve is a promise to preserve their lives at work even if we cannot ensure a fair share of profit for their toil. This is something which is within our capacity to deliver. I particularly look towards the BGMEA because I know that it is run by some very educated and progressive people, who can not only review the conditions of the garment industry workers and their workspace in the future if they seriously intend to do so, but can also set up some kind of standards to follow, so as to ensure that our prime source of foreign exchange revenue remain healthy and in good hands.

Mujtaba Ahsan is a candidate in the Architectural Doctorate Program, University of Hawaii.