Carlton Towers was anything but rescue-friendly

Tuesday’s fire mishap at the seven-storey Carlton Towers was a nightmare not only for the occupants of the 90-odd companies and commercial establishments housed there, but also the fire fighters who jumped headlong into the rescue operations.  The fire men admitted that gross building violations rendered their operations next to impossible.

“Our experienced fire fighters themselves were struggling inside Carlton Towers. I can very well imagine the trauma of the people who were trapped inside the building,” M Sharief, regional fire officer, who was part of the rescue operations, said.

“Each floor of the building has been divided into 14 portions that are occupied by various commercial establishments. The building has a centralised duct for the lift service and a staircase serving as the centralised exit. Also, every floor has two exit points. The trouble arose because every exit point was blocked with grills or padlocks. Besides, each owner had cordoned off his or her area to ensure that no one else could access it,” Sharief said.

The 200-odd firemen were groping in the smoke-filled building. “We were stuck in the hallway of each floor as there was no space to move. After reaching the sixth and seventh floors, the smoke started stagnated in the centralised way. This is why people in those floors suffered from asphyxiation, unlike those on the lower floors. We spent at least 15 to 20 minutes finding the smaller exits on each floor and cutting open the grills. It then took us another 15 to 20 minutes to break open each door,” Sharief said.

The establishments had secured their doors with access control systems, which got jammed due to the fire. When the fire started in the centralised duct it first spread to the centralised exits and then travelled upwards. “The toxic gases spread to each floor. Since the centralised exit was full of smoke and fire, and the smaller exits on each floor were locked, there was no way to move around,” he said.

Also, the firemen had no proper breathing apparatus and had to take five-minute breaks in between to breathe. They said the apparatus were heavy and that would have hindered the operation.

According to senior officers in the fire department, barricading exit points was a massive violation, for which the building and the company owners should be held responsible.

“When Carlton Towers was constructed, the fire department issued the NOC as all safety norms were adhered to. But later the building was partitioned into several areas, and sold to companies. Instead of thinking about training their staff and providing evacuation points,  these companies followed their own norms. Though there were sprinklers, smoke detectors and even exit points, nothing was working properly. We do not have the provision to conduct periodic audits. Otherwise, the fire could have been prevented from becoming a major mishap,” a senior officer in the department said.