Burning Bright

JANUARY 2002 - There is a firm conviction in the minds of most people that were the Fire Brigade called out in any city where it exists, to douse out a burning cigarette butt, it would fail completely. This would happen for a number of reasons. The Fire Brigade could not be reached because they don’t have a telephone and the one they have does not work. They have a telephone and it does work, but no one attended the call. The Fire Brigade received the call, but there was no one there who could decide what to do next. Dousing out a burning cigarette butt is no easy task, as all of us well understand. They were able to get a decision to mobilize and move out, but the driver of the Fire Brigade had gone to take a leak – if you will forgive the unfortunate imagery. That the driver was there and willing to go, but the Fire Brigade engine refused to start, having lain dead since the British left it there in 1947. That having started the engine, they had forgotten where to go. That having arrived at the scene of the burning butt, they realized they had no hosepipes. That having secured the hosepipes and arriving at the scene, they found they had no water. That having gone and done all the things right finally, the butt had burnt itself out anyway.

After the Irani Circus, the Fire Brigade is the next most comical thing we have and why it should be housed in various public buildings all over the country, is beyond all of us, when the only rightful place it belongs to is the museum, where it can be happily placed out of harm’s way. Since all the Fire Brigades in the country are unable, genetically speaking, to extinguish any kind of fire, the least we can do is to change their name. They could be called Headless Brigade or Dust & Ashes Brigade or just Braindead Brigade. It is estimated that since the creation of the country – not many can recall when that happened because the country has been created so many times now, the Fire Brigade has maintained an impeccable record of having been the last to arrive at the scene and the first to leave. It has an unblemished record of never having put out a fire. This has not been easy to achieve and there have been times when it almost managed to perform the job, but timely prevention averted that - those on duty were grimly reminded of the sacred oath they had taken when they joined the Brigade – never put out a fire. There are many people who are loyal fans of the Fire Brigade because they are convinced that any outfit would have by now abandoned its mission statement and actually become what some silly people foolishly think it should be – a body of men who extinguish fires. One mentions men, since no woman has ever joined the Brigade, being good only at lighting fires, of one kind or another.

Given this rich history, why is everyone upset with the Islamabad Fire Department (is that what it is called?) for having failed completely to douse out the fire that took care of the 17 floor Shaheed-I-Millat Secretariat last Tuesday, which eventually burnt down the entire building, lock, stock and barrel and all the things that it had – mostly useless papers that were rotting there. Knowing what we did with the Shaheed –I-Millat before he became Shaheed, should well indicate what would happen to any building that carries his name. I fear for the Quaid-e-Azam International Airport, but that’s another matter. The lurid stories that have emerged from that incident – the government spokesperson bless his black little heart, wasted no time in announcing to some half-drenched on lookers ‘act of terrorism cannot be ruled out’ and should have added, ‘there is a hidden hand behind this act’ or ‘we have reason to believe that this is the work of RAW’ – reveal very little we don’t already know. The fire began in the evening and could have been caused by anything, as fires usually are, but it is only a matter of detail that it was finally sort of put to rest next morning – extinguish is too strong a word and banned from the Fire Brigade vocabulary by strict orders of the Chief Fire Priest. Had the Brigade not been called out, it is likely the fire would have gone out sooner, but that too, is another matter.

The PWD and CDA – no one knows precisely what these names mean or stand for (or sit for since most things don’t stand for long here), had only recently given the building a NOC declaring it fit for use. Of course they never specified what it was fit for and no one thought of asking them, so it might well have been, ‘fit for the use of rats,’ meaning not the section officers who were seen to scurry about there, but the genuine rats who, we all know, outnumber the country’s population, ten to one. There are of course any amount of wild theories that go with all that happens here and in all of them, one way or another, rats feature. The usual scenario unfolds like this. Rats eat wires, cables, tubing – anything that is long and travels from here to there. Once they do that, you get wrong numbers, get gassed to death or fires break out, gutting everything including the rats. Why rats have this death wish, I have no idea and perhaps Dr. Akbar S. Ahmed can enlighten us on this matter, but while some of them have been known to desert a burning building which is actually a sinking ship given the enormous number of long-forgotten files they contain, most perish with the files. It is also common knowledge that in Pakistan, anything can start a fire – in some cases even violent disagreements.

It is also well established that no fire fighting equipment functions in any building. Firstly to call it fire fighting equipment is in itself a derogatory thing since the equipment cannot be accused of that charge. Therefore, why are all the officials in all the public buildings now in a state of shock having discovered that all the red things in their halls do not function, have never functioned and will never function. The fire extinguishers are well and truly extinguished long before they were to expire, the pipes that are ceremoniously coiled have more holes than Benazir Bhutto’s claim to innocence. The smoke detectors cannot detect anything including a RAW agent and expecting them to detect smoke is simply wishful thinking.

The fact is that we have all worked very hard not to be prepared for anything. Nothing works here because nothing is supposed to work. If a tidal wave were to hit Karachi, the first thing that the city would do would be to sink without a trace. If a plane crash-landed in Lahore, the last thing they'd do would be to rescue the trapped passengers. If a flood hits Multan, the authorities would head out of town, fast like. If a dam broke in Tarbela, the entire belt would drown without a sound. If the Badshahi Mosque catches fire, it will burn to the ground – the Ravi is too far and in any case, has no water. We are a country waiting for a disaster to happen and one doesn’t mean the return of Mian Nawaz Sharif and party. We are not ready to tackle anything out of the ordinary – come to think of it, we are not ready to tackle anything. As for the Keystone Cops in Islamabad, they successfully managed to burn down most of the Margalla Hills every year. The Secretariat is a new, and hugely successful chapter in their glorious history. One wishes them well.