‘There were no safety features’: Outrage follows New Delhi fire

The phone calls started before dawn, frantic young men dialling relatives in faraway villages. As a fire engulfed the building where they worked and slept in New Delhi, blocking exits and filling rooms with smoke, the trapped men bid loved ones goodbye through sobs.

“There is no escape route, no option at all,” one of the men, Muhammad Musharraf, told a friend on the phone, as others screamed in the background. “I can’t even breathe.”

The blaze that killed at least 43 people and injured dozens more early Sunday in New Delhi was one of the worst on record in the country, and it highlighted chronic problems with slipshod city planning and lax enforcement of fire regulations in the Indian capital.

The four-story residential building was one of several thousand in northern Delhi that had been illegally converted into a factory. Officials said the five or so businesses operating inside were unlicensed.

A fire engine is seen near the site of a fire that swept through a factory where labourers were sleeping on Sunday, in New Delhi, India Dec 9, 2019. REUTERS

The building, in the neighbourhood of Anaj Mandi, had no fire safety certification or emergency escape route. Windows were blocked with metal grilles, flammable objects covered staircases and one of the building’s two exits was locked when the fire broke out, according to Atul Garg, the chief fire officer in New Delhi.

Many workers slept 10 to 15 in tiny, dimly lit rooms, where they spent their days making paper products, backpacks, plastic toys and clothing. Most were young Muslim men, some of them teenagers, who had come from distant villages in search of jobs that paid just a few dollars a day.

“There were no safety features,” Garg said.

The building’s owner, whom officials identified simply as Rehan, had also built at least one additional floor that did not meet minimum safety standards. He has been arrested and charged with crimes of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and “negligent conduct.”

Varsha Joshi, a commissioner for the local municipal corporation, told reporters that officials tried to inspect the building last week, as part of a bigger project closing illegal manufacturing units, but that some of the floors had been locked.

According to city data, at least 2,800 businesses have been found to work from residential buildings without proper paperwork in northern Delhi, though officials said the true figure could easily surpass 10,000.

A fire engine is seen near the site of a fire that swept through a factory where labourers were sleeping on Sunday, in New Delhi, India Dec 9, 2019. REUTERS

Fires occur regularly in India’s cramped urban centres. New Delhi and its suburbs, a metropolis of more than 46 million, is full of dilapidated apartments squished into cubbyhole alleys.

Many businesses opt to rent floors in these buildings rather than spend more on factories in industrial areas. Even there, disaster often strikes. Last year, a blaze at a fireworks factory on the outskirts of New Delhi killed at least 17 people.

The fire on Sunday started on the building’s second or third floor around 5 a.m., possibly from a short circuit.

Thirty minutes later, dozens of firefighters were at the scene, but they struggled to reach the entrance: A small lane leading to the building could not accommodate more than one truck, and the path was further blocked by parked motorcycles.

As smoke billowed from the building, workers trapped inside screamed for help through the window grilles. Firefighters broke down doors and carried unconscious men on their backs.

The streets, clogged with hundreds of people and convoys carrying politicians, became so chaotic that some victims were transported to hospitals in auto rickshaws. It took firefighters several hours to douse the flames.

Police stand guard as onlookers gather near the site of a fire that swept through a factory where laborers were sleeping, in New Delhi, India Dec 8, 2019. REUTERS

“If there was an unlocked exit on the top floor, many more people might have been saved,” said Mohammad Irfan, a resident who lives at the end of the alley.

On Monday, relatives wound through the halls of Lok Nayak Hospital to identify the dead and tend to the injured.

Among them was Alauddin Nadab, who rushed between the burn unit, where his brother was being treated, and the hospital’s mortuary, where the bodies of two cousins were stored.

Early Sunday, a relative from the state of Bihar called Nadab, who also lives in Anaj Mandi, telling him that his brother and cousins were trapped in the building, where they each earned about $7 a day making hats and leather products.

When Nadab reached the hospital, doctors told him that his cousins had already died and that his 22-year-old brother had little chance of surviving. Sixty percent of his body was covered in burns.

“This is the life of poor men in this country,” Nadab said.

© 2019 New York Times News Service