Last Friday’s Regent Street fire was a grim reminder of the historic vulnerability of a huge section of our commercial capital to disaster. Regent Street particularly, with its continuum of old wooden buildings, former dwelling houses, in some cases, some of which have benefited from little more than a decorative façade before being transformed into business places, remains a potential fire disaster zone. In fact, fires in Regent Street and in various other cluttered sections of Georgetown are invariably huge, intense and considerably destructive. That was exactly the case last Friday, notwithstanding the Fire Chief Marlon Gentle’s remark to this newspaper that on this occasion “we were lucky, very lucky.”
Whatever the cause of that particular conflagration Mr. Gentle is clearly concerned over the fact that the business community as a whole is doing a good deal less than it can to protect itself against fires and to protect our old, wooden capital in the bargain. Mr. Gentle is correct. What passes for trading at what can be described as little more than dwelling houses turned storage on Regent Street amounts to little more than legitimized lawlessness and no one in authority seems either willing or able to bring this situation to an end.
Some of the more common transgressions of fire regulations include an absence of in-house fire-fighting equipment, faulty electrical wiring, dangerous storage practices and failure to create clear, unencumbered entrances. That is as far as the older buildings are concerned.
A new generation of ‘high rise’ structures, some of which are in fact extensive renovations of old buildings, has emerged and the Fire Chief says he is concerned over issues of adherence to the building code and to fire regulations both in terms of their architecture and in terms of the installation of in-house equipment and facilities to support fire-fighting. This is yet another legitimate area of concern since the layout of some of these ‘new structures’ raises valid questions as to whether or not the rules and regulations are actually being applied as strictly as they ought to be in the process of their construction.
Here, issues of effective enforcement arise. One wonders whether some businesses are not simply being allowed to do as they please and whether, as well, the ‘comfort’ of insurance cover has not in many cases created an attitude of indifference to the danger of fires.
Interestingly, the views expressed by the Fire Chief on the delinquency of sections of the business community as far as fire awareness is concerned are more-or-less echoed by the GCCI President who bluntly told this newspaper that he believed that in some cases profits and not good sense was what motivated the insensitivity of some business houses to fires. Of course, if the President of the Chamber of Commerce is correct in suggesting that some businesses are seeking to cut financial corners by shortchanging themselves on fire prevention infrastructure, then they are pursuing a seriously flawed logic since the kinds of disastrous fires that have afflicted the commercial capital usually impact on that bottom line significantly, the protection of insurance coverage (in some cases) notwithstanding.
As with so many other situations in our society effective enforcement is hamstrung by a combination of shortsightedness and indifference on the part of those who must apply the regulations and a combination of inefficiency, a lack of will and a lack of capacity among those who must enforce them. Some shops and stores on Regent Street, for example, are no more than weak and unreliable wooden structures cluttered to the ceilings with mostly combustible material so that when a fire occurs the contents fuel the flames and the building eventually falls in on itself.
Setting aside the need for more effective action by the enforcement authorities much of the blame for this patently unacceptable state of affairs has to be placed at the door of the business community – or at least sections thereof – which, by the admission of the GCCI President really couldn’t give two hoots about fire safety practices as long as they trade every day; and the fact that it does not appear that any of the private sector umbrella organizations have placed the issue of fire safety on the front burner of their agendas is hardly a feather in their own caps.
Since the configuration of the buildings on Regent Street and elsewhere in the city means that you are only as safe as the business premises next door allows you to be, we find ourselves in a situation where a huge chunk of our capital remains hostage to the indifference and insensitivity of those traders who simply couldn’t care less. Correcting that situation is not a job for the Fire Service it is the responsibility of the municipal authorities, the lawmakers and the law enforcement authorities. They too are guilty by indifference; and in the final analysis is the entire capital city, or at least large sections of it, which continue to be held hostage to the absurd and unacceptable risk that we continue to run.
