Irfan Tramboo
Pampore, Sept 20: With mobile phones defunct, the fire incidents in Kashmir Valley are proving to be costly for the residents as they are not able to call the nearby Fire and Emergency Stations.
Such fire incidents, under normal circumstances, used to be put under control within minutes, but now, they are proving to be incurring huge damages to the residents.
In the recent incident, the non-availability of modes of communication has cost three families their shelter as fire gutted a three storey building in Khankah Bagh Pampore on Tuesday afternoon. The damage which the family said could have been avoided under normal circumstances.
Resorting to the ancient ways of sending the messages, the locals of the area had to send someone to drop a message at the nearby Fire and Emergency Service Station which took around 20 minutes, during which the damage was already done and the fire had engulfed the building.
Locals in the area said that there are no landline connections in the neighborhood and the non-availability of mobile communication made the situation worse. “If mobile phones would have been functional, the damage would have been minimized; there are no landline connections in the neighborhood, making it difficult for us to contact the fire and emergency station,” he said.
He said that what turned the situation scary was when the gas cylinders exploded in the house leading the fire to spread. “It was when the person who was sent to get the fire tenders and the gas cylinders were exploding that was scary and you would feel utter helpless,” he said.
The family members including the locals are demanding that the Govt should at least put in place some mechanism with the help of which the fire incidents causing damages can be taken care of. “If we were able to contact them and they were here in time, our house which is catering to three families would have been saved; the Govt should consider this issue and do something for it,” said Nazir Ahmad Bhat who was also living in the house.
There have been several such incidents even in district Srinagar, wherein the locals had to send in someone with an SOS to the nearby fire and emergency stations earlier when even the landlines were down. In most of the cases the fire incidents caused immense damage.
The families are demanding that the Government should take notice of the incidents. They are also demanding compensation from the Government for the damages that have incurred to them. “We are living at three different places as the house stands damaged, we demand that the government should provide us with a helping hand,” he said.
Similar, in old city of Srinagar, two fire incidents broke out and which gutted more than three structures in very less time, rendering three families homeless. “We have witnessed several such fire incidents in the past, we used to call the fire tenders and they used to come in no more than two minutes, but during the fire incidents that broke out in the city, the fire tenders took longer to reach the spot, as we had to send someone in,” said Abdul Ahad a resident of Safa Kadal.
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