How prepared are we?
To what extent is the Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defence prepared to handle a pre- and post-earthquake situation?
Bangladesh is very vulnerable to both natural and man-made disasters. Although we have progressed quite well in terms of tackling disasters like cyclones and floods, in case of tackling man-made disasters like earthquakes we are still lagging behind. Unplanned urbanisation, unregulated building construction, traffic jam, unprotected gas and electric lines -- all these factors are increasing the risks.
Although capacity building is a big challenge, we are trying to be as prepared as possible. We have 300 fire stations all over the country, employing around 8000 people. Within two to three years' time, the number will be 550. In an ideal city, you should reach any place of accident from your fire station in 20 minutes. After 20 minutes of an accident, the situation usually gets out of control. If, say, there is a fire in Motijheel, it would get out of control by the time we get there from any of our fire station.
We have proposed that the government increase the number of fire stations. This should be included in the city's master plan. Currently we have only 13 fire stations in Dhaka; we need at least seven more. If that can't be done, we will be helpless during a big disaster.
As part of our pre-disaster preparedness, we have awareness building programmes. The government has provided us with laptops and multimedia facilities which we use while providing trainings on preparedness in rural schools. We even go to parks in the morning and show people what to do during and after an earthquake using multimedia facilities. Sometimes some schools request us for preparedness trainings. We also work in collaboration with some NGOs.
We had shortage of equipment in the past. But we will get quite a good amount of rescue equipment by next year as the government is going to buy us equipment worth Tk 400 crore. We are getting international assistance as well. The World Bank is giving us equipment support. Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will help us build earthquake resilient headquarters, while Korea will build an emergency operation centre for us. So by next year we will be capable enough to carry out post-earthquake rescue operations.
It would not have been possible for your team to perform the rescue operations during Rana Plaza disaster had the local people not participated in it. In light of that, do you have any plans to involve and train local people in rescue operations?
So far we have trained 30,000 urban volunteers for Dhaka, Sylhet and Chittagong. The government has a plan to train at least 62,000 volunteers, phase by phase. Experts like doctors, engineers and technicians are among the volunteers. They are being selected based on their physical abilities and professional background. We also maintain a database of the volunteers. We have targeted the urban areas because urban areas are more at risk. In case of a major earthquake, we will also need the help of the armed forces.
Moreover, to make this programme sustainable, we need to keep the volunteers under the city corporations as well as involve the workers of the city corporations in the programme. At present we have 96 wards in Dhaka and in each ward we have five teams. There are 39 people in a team including three professional fire brigade personnel. On an average, there are 200 volunteers per ward, of them 50 to 60 percent are active.
How do you plan to carry out rescue operations in the narrow lanes of Dhaka?
We have made some progress with regard to operating in narrow roads. China has donated to us 150 fire fighting motorcycles. After an earthquake, if the narrow roads get damaged, we will be able to carry out rescue operations. The government will buy us more of these motorcycles. We have built some small improvised four-wheeler trucks with compressed air foam. With this air foam fire can be extinguished with less water. We will also get two-wheeler and four-wheeler water mist fire fighting vehicles, which is very helpful for fire fighting in narrow roads. In addition, we are locally modifying our vehicles so that we can work in Old Dhaka.
Fire Brigade personnel failed to rescue Jihad, a child who was stuck in a well in Shahjahanpur of Dhaka. But later innovative local youths rescued his dead body. Isn't it time the fire service appointed a team of young inventive engineers?
In Jihad's case, we did not abandon but rather temporarily halt the rescue operation because we needed to find a different technology. We included the names of the local youths who invented the cage to rescue Jihad in our volunteer list. We learn from our mistakes and improve our rescue methods and technologies. We regularly carry out successful rescue operations. In Dhaka almost every day our firefighters rescue people stuck in lifts and douse fires, but you don't get to hear about it. There may be some failures, but one case can't be cited as an example.
In every division we have a workshop where our engineers do research and development work. We have a team of engineers for innovating new tools and techniques but we surely need to expand the team. At present we have an ad-hoc team. We are planning to submit a proposal that the government should establish a fire safety academy near Dhaka.
I hope within two years you will notice a lot of improvements. We are providing round-the-clock training. So far we have trained more than two lakh garment workers. We have established Rapid Rescue Squad in 79 locations. They continuously patrol the accident-prone areas. Whenever there is a road crash, the members of this squad take the victims to the nearest hospitals, thereby saving a lot of lives. We are not sitting at our fire stations anymore; we have come out on the streets for providing people with good service.
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