Mockery of Fire Drill

We have heard all this before - that life is cheap in India, disaster management is not at all a priority for our society. And Bangalore is no exception to all this. Two years back the Carlton fire tragedy exposed how safety measures were sacrificed by the builder at the altar of greed, and how officials winked and signed all the dotted lines - again for a price. It was often said that we as a nation are least bothered about safety measures.

Look at Japan, we were told, how well they cope with disasters. They conduct regular drills and that is why they are able to do all that. When Carlton became a national TV spectacle, with people jumping off from the building in panic, the need for fire drills gained currency.

But what happened on February 24, 2012, almost exactly two years after the Carlton tragedy (it happened on February 23, 2010) reveals that we are ill-equipped even to carry out such drills, leave alone dealing with the actual tragedy. Maybe the organisers need to go on 'phoren' tour to learn all this.

A fire drill at a readymade garment factory in the Yeshwanthpur industrial suburbs went haywire causing the death of a woman employee. As per the drill, the employees were asked to use a rope to climb down from the fourth storey. She was the second person to do so and in the midway the rope snapped and the rest was history.

Several disturbing questions come to my mind. Firstly was it necessary that the employees had to risk their lives by climbing down from fourth floor and that too without a safety net. Forget snapping of rope, what about people with dizziness and fear of heights, won't they panic? Couldn't they have used a dummy to demonstrate it.

Climbing down a rope is no joke. Military personnel practice for months to master it. Maybe, they thought garment factory workers were Supermen and Spiderman by default!

There are also reports that the rope used was an old one and of poor quality. Not only that some had raised objections regarding the rope, but the fire department officials chose to ignore it. Anyhow now no amount of debating or inquiries would bring any solace to the woman's near and dear ones.

In my previous office we used to have fire drills carried out by one private agency, but we never had to do such risky stunts. In fact, it was the other extreme, they used to be hilarious affairs. A Colonel Blimp type guy used to take centre stage and, quite literally, bark on the microphone and some of his assistants and office volunteers (ostensibly named Emergency Response Team) used to do a demo on how to carry out rescue act.

He used to pick up volunteers for 'fire victims' randomly from the audience and used to address each one of them with film star names. "Hey Madhuri Dixit, come here?" or "hey Salman Khan don't hide behind the red shirt guy, come to the stage?"

I still recall him telling one woman 'victim' volunteer, "Don't think 'oh I am a woman, how can these men hold me'." and turning to the volunteers he said, "You should promise that you would see her as your sister and nothing else." It used to be quite tough to keep a straight face. 

And 'backbenchers' like me used to slip off to the nearest food court in our office campus. In fact these drills used to 'fire up' sales at the food court and bunk shops located outside the campus. That of course shows the other very typical Indian mindset - "Nothing will happen to me".

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Warming winters

While watching NDTV 24x7 my attention often gets drawn to the running ticker below showing live temperatures of various cities in the country. And often I feel quite alarmed on seeing Bangalore's temperature, which seems always on the higher side during winters. Quite often it is even higher than Mumbai, which has more of a tropical coastal weather.
 
This winter was rather freakish all over India, with temperatures falling below the usual levels and places like Dehra Dun even experiencing snowfall - something that had never happened in that hill station for decades. But alas, no such pleasant surprises for Bangaloreans. Here whatever little cool breeze we experience in the winter mornings vanish with the early rays of sunshine. After that the scorching sun takes centrestage and then it is little different from April-May, and we wait for sunset for some relief. Sweater, jackets seem redundant (unless you are riding a bike) or more of a fashion statement.
 
The other day I read a news report that average temperature in the city was rising at a faster rate than other places. Scientists claim that while the temperatures world wide rose by one degree in 100 years, in the Garden City it did so by two degrees. It is a startling finding and I feel the days of 40-plus degree centigrade summers is round the corner. Experts says all this is due to massive urbanisation following the IT boom.
 
The city seems to be broadly suffering from two sets of problems - one that every city undergoing rapid urbanisation is afflicted with and the other due to the city's peculiar characteristics such as topography, climate. The city's bewildering pace of urbanisation had caught everyone off guard. The results have been dwindling tree cover and an exponential increase in concrete structures. Even trees on footpaths seem to be weakening with roots getting choked by masonary and leaves are getting exposed to fumes from ever increasing vehicular population.
 
The city's burgeoning population has put its lakes under stress. Many of them either got vanished to carry out 'development' and some have been reduced to overgrown drains to dump effluents. Some of the city's landmarks such as Kempegowda bus station, Kanteerva stadium and National Dairy Research Institute are actually situated on lake lands. Guess, those days environment was not a strong constituency and these measures may have had the blessings of the people.

The city is actually staring at a major water crisis and if nothing timely is done to preserve the depleting water table, the problem would only worsen. Moreover since the city is located on a plateau, its ecology is all the more fragile.
 
Frankly I see not much remedial measures happening. The city fathers have raised the pitch for rain water harvesting, but it has a long gestation period. Surprisingly not much is being talked about  water recycling. The government should get proactive and set up recycling plants in all wards to collect waste water for recycling. It should make it mandatory that only recycled water should be used for industrial purposes. And also in bathrooms and for activities like washing cars, gardening etc. The situation calls for really drastic measures.
As a passing thought I often see water lorries spilling around water as the move on the road. Something needs to be done to curb this criminal waste.

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