A fire led to tragedy at Ali Towers situated on Lahore’s M M Alam Road earlier this month
KARACHI: The heart-rending videos and photographs that appeared on the news and social media spread intense feelings of torment: women hysterically laying hold of exiguous assets, men running out of patience, children moving helter-skelter, imprudently, and a high-rise building turning into ashes.
The above described scenario is of the tragedy that happened at Ali Towers situated on Lahore’s M M Alam Road earlier this month, as fire erupted in it.
The people trapped somehow tried to protect themselves from the fire and helplessly waited for the rescue during the first 45 minutes of the incident. After a while, when they realised no help was about to come anytime soon, two men jumped out of the shopping mall in a desperate attempt to escape the blaze.
“Every single person was rescued from the building,” the provincial information minister said while speaking to the media. Is that really appropriate to say? Seven fire tenders took part in extinguishing the fire, with the personnel entering the affected building through an adjacent building. There were insufficient arrangements to control the fire. Highly dangerous attempts to escape from the fire occurred because of the unavailability of rescue services.
A petition has been filed in the Lahore High Court to bring the responsible to justice, besides making strict arrangements to avert such incidents in future. Advocate Noshab A Khan has filed the petition accusing former director LDA Ahad Khan Cheema of negligence that caused the incident and claimed lives of 26 people. He said had the director acted upon the recommendations forwarded by the Fire Safety Commission constituted by the LHC, this incident would not have happened.
This is also not the first time this type of incident had occurred. But despite the rising frequency of fire incidents, rescue authorities are untrained and ill-equipped to tackle such situations.
Kiran Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, September 23rd, 2018.
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