A tragedy and a warning

A truly dreadful tragedy is unfolding as these words are written. A 24-story block of apartments in west London caught fire in the early hours of Wednesday morning. The fire spread very quickly, engulfing the building from top to bottom within minutes. There had recently been a refurbishment and the outside of the building had been clad with plastic which is clearly from the graphic footage, highly combustible. There are no confirmed casualty figures beyond there being 50 people in five London hospitals. There were at least 129 apartments in the block and few have escaped damage. At the height of the blaze there were 40 fire engines and 200 firefighters at the scene.

This appalling tragedy is of direct and urgent importance to Pakistan and its rapidly expanding urban populations. This newspaper carried a feature article on 13^th June that highlighted the ramshackle and wholly inadequate fire and rescue services in Karachi. The most superficial of glances at almost any urban skyline in the country reveals tower blocks rising everywhere. Even modest buildings are beyond the reach of local fire brigades, and their equipment is inadequate even where it exists at all. The 1122 service in Punjab is equipped to deal with two-and-three storey emergencies — the height of the majority of buildings/residences — but times are changing.



Let there be no misunderstanding. What has happened in London can and in all probability eventually will happen in a Pakistani city. It will, as in London, be a mass-casualty event. Nowhere in the country is capable of making an appropriate response to such a fire, and that includes the capital, Islamabad, which is home to an increasing number of high-rise buildings both residential and office spaces. There is a woeful disregard for the health and safety of the workforce generally and a widespread flouting of safety and fire regulations. Many working and residential environments in the country are desperately unsafe and have been so since the day they were completed. Tower-block fires are not that uncommon but the fire in London is unusual for its speed of development and ferocity, and we hope that nothing of the like ever happens in Pakistan — though to be brutally realistic the likelihood is high.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 15^th, 2017.

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