The Stephen Court fire may have died down, but its horrifying memories will remain afresh in the minds of many Kolkatans for the years to come. It’s just like another great heritage building that stands tall in the city of joy. The beautiful, big 150-year old building with wooden staircase and royal architecture used to speak high of the by-gone British era in the then Calcutta.
But, now it has turned to ashes, with the great fire that broke on 23rd March afternoon. The fire destroyed the building and left many residents homeless. There used to be quite a few offices, which were brought down by the devastating fire.
Indeed a tragic moment for all people who lived there and who worked there. Most of the persons hardly got time to escape and were charred to death. I really hated to read the newspaper for the first couple of days, with pictures of relatives crying and narration of the burned and how it feels losing dear ones.
Father lost his child, mother crying over the death of her only son or daughter, relatives blaming the police or fire brigade for the intensity of the mishap – who is the actual culprit in the Stephen Court House case?
Well, everyone knows that every coin has two sides. Hence, just like the fire brigade and police is to blame for reaching quite late and not having adequate measures to combat the huge fire at Park Street, the Stephen house owners and Kolkata Municipal Corporation cannot be left behind.
How come KMC has given permission to erect floors number 5 and 6, without any valid documents? A leading Kolkata daily has quoted the caretaker of the house saying these 2 floors were started to be constructed much before the owners got the permission from the corporation to do so.
Loose wires were seen hanging from the walls and near the meter boxes, which were many in number. Why was no step taken to address the matter?
The terrace remained locked everyday, why was it so? The residents and office people have said that they repeatedly told the caretaker to hand over duplicate keys to them, but nothing has been done. Had the terrace remained open, at least some could have escaped death.
The Fire Minister, Pratim Chatterjee is a person well known for speaking out of the world in specific situations. He is still “learning” from the lessons of fire breakout in the city and is now suddenly awake from his dream to make arrangements to bring the skylift from Salt Lake and Behala to central Kolkata, where most of the high rises happen to be situated.
It is really a shame to see these kinds of figures holding such prestigious posts in the West Bengal government. Men like him hardly repent for the fault that lies with his department; instead he has entered into the dirty game of politics, blaming KMC for not looking after houses in hazardous areas.
The CPI-M government will never learn from its lessons, and this is not the first time that a fire of this magnitude has broken in Kolkata. Earlier also we have seen occasions were the fire brigade has failed to take adequate steps to save life and property in different parts of the city.
The fire brigade hardly reaches a place on time! And, there are always excuses ready for things not falling on the right place. The fire men came without any rubber masks, only with gumboots and without any nets to save lives of those who might jump from the high rise to save their lives. Later, it was known that they have carpets and no nets ready in hand!
What a lovely picture of such an important, emergency department of every government in the world!! The fire brigade station is located just a few blocks away from 18A Park Street (address of Stephen House) but still it took nearly an hour to make proper arrangements to start life-saving operations.
Truly I wonder, what will happen to this city and to the people like us, who reside here! Is anyone listening?
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