Fire in Karachi

The fire at the Regent Plaza hotel in Karachi which killed 12 people and injured 75 others early  on Monday  morning is a tragedy – and may very well be one of criminal proportions. The only question to investigate is who is responsible for it. Karachi Mayor Waseem Akhtar blamed the hotel for the slow response to the fire, claiming it had no fire exits or fire alarms. Fire officers said the hotel management was negligent as it did not even turn off the air conditioning, had no markings on fire exits, and that the smoke detectors and fire alarms were not functioning. Even the Edhi Foundation – as usual one of the first to send help in times of disaster – criticised the hotel management for not being able to help guests. The Regent Plaza responded by tweeting photographs of clearly marked fire alarms, extinguishers and fire exits on their premises. Its security officer blamed the fire department for taking too long to reach the site, claiming many lives could have been saved had the rescue operation started on time. According to the hotel, it took more than an hour for the fire department to reach the Regent Plaza.

There will be plenty of time for recriminations later; for now we should be mourning the victims, providing help to the wounded and figuring out ways to minimise the damage caused by such incidents in the future. It is well known that many buildings in Karachi are death traps, built without any consideration of safety codes and approved by building authorities in thrall to the builders’ mafia. They lack proper procedures for fire drills, do not have separate fire exits and do not meet standards of being earthquake proof. The fire department is little better. International standards recommend having one fire station for every hundred thousand people. By that metric, Karachi should have at least 200 fire stations. There are only about 25 in the city. This is why its response time is so slow, not just in the case of the Regent Plaza, but also during the Baldia Town factory fire in 2012. Karachi, thanks to its heavy traffic and sprawling population, needs trained aerial fire-fighters so that the problem can be tackled from the sky before it gets out of control. Most fires take only a few minutes to spread so they need to be controlled immediately. By the time the fire department gets to the scene, it is already too late. The deaths at the Regent Plaza were entirely preventable. Now it is up to the government to find out who should be held responsible for not doing their jobs and putting so many people at risk.