The New Nation - Internet Edition

FIRE incidents are common in Bangladesh and the same are reported frequently in the relatively dry winter months. Thus, a series of fire incidents have been reported in the press. According to one such report, a devastating fire gutted 100 shops causing damages valued Taka 20 crore at Banaripara upazila of the Barisal district on Sunday. Another report highlighted that huge properties of three shops at Sonali New Market at Dhunot town in Bogra were destroyed by fire on Saturday night. 35 dwelling houses at Napitpara under Raozan upazila in Chittagong burnt to ashes on Saturday evening. And yet another report informed about the destruction of 7 shops at Kalikhala Bazar under Gosairghat upazila on Thursday night.

Fire accidents such as the above lead to loss of resources valued some 2,000 million Taka annually, on an average, in Bangladesh. This is not a small amount and shows the extent of the national loss. However, more than upgrading the fire service, the imperative is training up or making the people conscious about preventing fire incidents. People generally are still habituated to throwing lighted cigarette butts and other burning litters carelessly that also sometimes can be traced back to big fires. The people on the whole should be made aware of what they can do on their part to prevent fire or practice self-help if fires should break out. Services of the mass media should be utilised to spread messages like the usefulness of keeping near at hand fire extinguishers, sand and buckets-full of water for quick use to extinguish fire before it spreads. They should be motivated not to toss about lighted objects carelessly, properly maintain power lines well to guard against short circuits and similarly service their gas lines making sure that gas burners are put off without fail after cooking.

Institutionally, the building of fire exits and keeping of minimum fire fighting gadgets should be made compulsory by law in apartment building, offices, industrial establishments and services centres. Fire drills are still unfamiliar to most of the people in the country. But this is a part of life in many countries where people in offices, industries and even apartment buildings regularly submit themselves to fire drills. The drills aim to mock an emergency situation and when a bell is rung all occupants of a building come out of it at the fastest through designated fire exits after shutting off power lines, gas burners, etc. The value of this is that everyone knows what to do and how to come out of an endangered structure safely. Drills such as these should be introduced on a large scale here to add to consciousness and preparedness against fire incidents.