Awami Markaz inferno: Question marks raised over rescue services

Rescue workers say fire exits were available, others find fault with response by fire brigades

ISLAMABAD: As a fire engulfed the Awami Markaz in the Red Zone on Sunday, question marks were raised over the performance of rescue workers who were unable to adequately combat the fire in time which saw at least two people die and a third injured in critical condition.

The fire, the second major blaze in the capital in a month’s time after the blaze at the Sunday market in H-9 gutted over 500 stalls in August, began on the ground floor of the five-storey building near the office of the Federal Tax Ombudsman and quickly spread to other floors of the building.

Police officers on patrol nearby first spotted the fire and alerted the rescue services to it. In the time that rescue workers took in coming, 24-year-old Ali Raza and 30-year-old Umer Ejaz decided to jump from the fourth floor of the building.

Videos of the incident showed a group of private security guards and some police officers rushing to hold out a blanket under him. The video showed the guards stretch the blanket as they held on tightly to the corners.



Raza then, unable to hold on or bear the heat any longer, jumped.

The guards waiting for him at the bottom were unable to catch or even adequately break Raza’s fall and he crashed into the pavement.

Ejaz, who followed Raza, met with a similar fate. The two were rushed to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) .

Rescue officials later said that there were fire exits available in the building and the two men need not have jumped. However, they explained that the young men probably panicked and decided to jump. Police officials, meanwhile, pointed out how the fire extinguishers installed in the building were expired, and hence ineffective in combatting the blaze.

Inability to tackle blaze?

Initially, two fire tenders were dispatched to the scene, and later five additional tenders – including one with an extending ladder and skylift – was dispatched to the scene.

After partially controlling the blaze, their efforts were apparently undone at around 11 am when a strong gust of wind fanned the flames reigniting the blaze in the building with a ferocity and spreading it further in the building. Islamabad Capital Territory Acting Deputy Commissioner Farasat Ali said that they had also summoned fire tenders from Rawalpindi while tenders of the Pakistan Navy also joined the effort later on. Despite that, it took the fire department over seven hours to tackle the blaze.



Some police officials claimed that the water hoses the fire department had could not adequately direct water to the blaze on the fifth floor, due to which, they claimed, the fire brigade ‘waited’ for the blaze to die down. Meanwhile, Barkan Saeed, the chairman of the Pakistan Software Houses Association (PASHA), claimed that it was the carelessness on the part of the security guards which allowed the fire to spread. “Instead of taking warnings issued by fire command circuit seriously, they turned off warning system,” Saeed told The Express Tribune.

Moreover, he also accused the fire brigade department of the Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation (IMC) of negligence for leaving the building without determining that fires on all floors had been put out.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 11^th, 2017.