Had there be electricity or emergency light system installed in the Gul Plaza, the people trapped inside the burning building could have been evacuated, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) chief fire officer told the inquiry commission probing the deadly fire on Friday.
Filing a response to the questionnaire of the inquiry commission, the chief fire officer submitted that when the first fire tender arrived at the Gul Plaza, the electricity was already shut down but no such direction had been given to the K-Electric by the fire department.
The officer said the first fire tender reached the building at 22:37 PM within ten minutes after receiving information of the fire from a man, Samad, at 10:26 PM. He said several emergency exists were blocked, locked or otherwise unusable prior to the incident. He added that the absence of effective emergency lighting, exit signage and trained floor wardens hindered safe evacuation.
The fire officer said that exits leading from the first floor to the upper floors were found locked. Other exits were also found locked. He said that no dedicated firefighter access/entry shafts or protected firefighting stairs were available.
He said multiple windows and entry points were secured with grills restricting internal access. He said that due to extreme heat, dense smoke, blocked access routes and structural instability risk, rescue and suppression operations were conducted primarily from exterior using ladders and snorkels while grills were cut where it was feasible to facilitate rescue.
To a question about not going for internal entry, he said that as per firefighting standard operating procedures, the firefighters had to lower the flame temperature of the premises prior to making internal entry in order to prevent life loss.
He said that at the time of the incident, the environment was characterised by extremely high temperatures, dense smoke accumulation and extensive flame involvement, creating interior conditions incompatible with human survival. He said that operational assessment indicated that any interior entry under such conditions would have exposed both public and responding personnel to immediate and severe life threatening hazards.
He said that primary cause of loss of life was lack of safety protocols in the Gul Plaza, including, but not limited to, failure of announcement in case of fire, lack of emergency fire exists, closed exit and discontinuation of electricity before evacuation of people present inside the building.
Responding to a question as to what critical failures most contributed to the tragedy, he said the absence of operating fire alarm and detection system, automatic sprinkler protection, absence of trained emergency response, unsafe electrical installations and operating conditions, disconnections of electricity, lack of emergency light system and block exist were major contributing failures to the tragedy.
