Playing with fire, Drowning in water

A fire engulfed a coaching centre in Gujarat’s Surat, killing at least 22 people. Visuals from the spot showed several students falling off the windows trying to escape thick smoke. The Chief Minister of the state has ordered an inquiry and has announced an ex-gratia amount of `4 lakh for the kin of the deceased.
As per news sources several others were also injured in a fire at a coaching centre in Sarthana area of Surat in Gujarat. The coaching centre was located on the third and fourth floors of the Takshashila Complex. Students, mostly teenagers, died “either due to suffocation or jumping off from the complex”. The government ordered an inquiry. The Deputy CM said. “We have ordered a detailed inquiry into the incident. We will not spare those
found guilty.”
It is a grim reminder of our repeated failures and perpetual state of unpreparedness when it comes to mitigating disasters. The images from Surat were quite similar to the Carlton Towers fire that broke out in Bengaluru in 2010. Helpless victims jumped off windows for survival while others perished, charred beyond recognition.
There have been numerous fire accidents in the past few years. In 2018 alone, ten lives were lost in a fire explosion in a cracker factory in Warangal; 6 died in a fire in ESIC Mumbai Hospital and yet another massive blaze in a Lucknow hotel claimed 5 lives. Then a massive fire that broke out in the Technic Plus One building in Mumbai killed 4 and another 17 lives met with a similar fate in Haryana after a fire engulfed a firecracker unit in Bawana. As per the latest data published by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in 2015, 48 Indians are killed in a fire accident every day. The numbers are more daunting for women, as fire accidents in residential areas are higher.
Another man-made disaster is flooding of our cities. If there is a heavy downpour for a couple of hours, and if there is incessant rain for a few days then the city becomes a sea. Mumbai, Chennai and Gurugram are some examples. Just recall the Chennai floods of 2015 and Mumbai floods of July 2005 and in the one in Gurugram; it’s the same story everywhere. It was a deluge in Mumbai and Chennai. In 2005, Mumbai received 944 mm of rain in 24 hours while the Chennai rains in 2015 broke the record of a hundred years. In both the cases a huge number of lives were lost and property worth billions of dollars destroyed. Was it nature’s fury that caused it?
Certainly not!

Problem area
What is the problem area? It is a fact that cities have grown tremendously in the last couple of decades and urbanization has taken place at a furious pace. What may have been a tank, lake, canal or river 20 years ago is today the site of multi-storeyed residential and industrial structures. According to a study done after the Chennai floods it was found that at that time alone there were more than 150,000 illegal structures in the city. More than 300 tanks, canals and lakes have disappeared. An information technology park in Chennai was flooded because it is located at a place where waters from two separate lakes converge and flow into a neighbouring creek. Many of the city’s info-tech facilities are built on marshlands, water-bodies and watercourses. The city’s famous automobile manufacturing hubs are located in the catchment areas of lakes.

Excessive use of plastic
Another big problem is use of plastic that chokes the drainage system of the city. Both Chennai and Mumbai suffered because of that. Mumbai received rainfall of 944 mm, a 100-year high, in a span of 24 hours.
The rain continued and at least 1,000 people lost their lives and 14,000 homes were destroyed. One of the reasons for the huge distress was that the drainages were completely choked by plastic waste and no water was able to drain out. Similar was the case in Chennai.
VK Sharma, Senior Professor of Disaster Management at the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) said the cities need a proper system of garbage collection and sewage disposal and regular cleaning of drains. “It is true that poor drainage and sewage system is the real cause of urban flooding. There is also migration to cities which often leads to land encroachment and exerts pressure on the existing civic infrastructure.” He further says “the urban planning has to have a long-term perspective and infrastructure should keep pace with growth of population. He said rain water harvesting should be made mandatory.
There is also the need of fixing accountability of government officials and municipal authorities if drains are not properly cleaned. Strict penalties should be imposed on people throwing garbage in the open.”

The disconnect
The disconnect with nature is also manifest in the failure of planners, builders, administrators and even common people to fathom the sheer power of natural events. Most of the cities have grown without a plan and with no regard to water flows, and without anticipating extreme weather events. Santosh Kumar, a professor at the National Institute of Disaster Management with expertise in disaster risk reduction and policy planning, says that climate change was also a factor in cities getting excessive rainfall. He says “Urban flooding occurs when water flows into an urban region faster than it can be absorbed into the soil. Earlier, a city received such amount of rainfall in two to three weeks”.
The fact is that cities today do not have spaces to absorb the excess water or to store it. Rapid urbanisation, industrialisation and population growth have also contributed to drainage systems getting congested. These drains are not able to take the pressure of huge water accumulated due to heavy rain, leading to waterlogging. Prof Kumar adds “steps should be taken to improve garbage disposal and ensure that plastics do not find their way to drains. Urban ecosystems comprising marshlands, wetlands, lakes and rivers have
steadily deteriorated.”
Wetlands and mangroves need to be looked at as vital infrastructure assets, as they help reduce the impact of torrential rains by absorbing water. It is essential to protect them. In addition, one must segregate the waste and should refrain from dumping it in storm-water drains and waterways. Be it fire or other man-made disasters like the Chennai or Mumbai floods, we all remember horrific images of boats being used in the city to rescue people. Why is it that even after so many incidents, we are still so unprepared to deal with them? Forget about small towns, even big cities face similar crises.
As in the case of Surat, it was found that fire brigade did not have ladders to reach third and fourth floor where these students were stuck. True, fire or flood cannot be predicted but awareness has to be created on how to deal with it. Unfortunately, we first create a situation which is bad, but worse is that we do not know how to deal with it. It cannot be business as usual.
We need to pull up our socks before it is too late.