The S.N. Roy Commission that probed the Stephen Court tragedy has found the ill-equipped fire services department as responsible as the callous caretakers of the Park Street building for the loss of 43 lives in the March 23 blaze.
The report, to be tabled in a couple of weeks but “not binding on the government”, apparently nails fire services minister Pratim Chatterjee’s lie that his department did the best it could to douse the flames and save lives that day.
According to some of the findings available with Metro, the fire at 18A Park Street had started well before it was spotted. One of the witnesses told the 12-member commission that a waiter in a Park Street restaurant informed him that his office was on fire around 1.45pm, half-an-hour before the first SOS went to the Calcutta police helpline 100.
No call went to the fire department’s helpline 101, leaving the cops to pass on the information at 2.19pm.
The report will state that the first fire brigade team reached Stephen Court from the Free School Street headquarters, barely 500 metres away, at 2.24pm. If the almost 45-minute gap between the first flames being noticed and firemen arriving fuelled the fire, the absence of firefighting equipment and expertise proved fatal for those trapped in the building.
The probe also confirms what The Telegraph had reported on May 24 — that the Bronto skylifts used to reach the higher storeys arrived over an hour and a half after the fire is said to have started. By then, some of the victims had jumped to their death.
The report will cite the difference in timings given by the police and the fire services department as proof of a cover-up attempt. The fire services claimed that the first Bronto lift reached Stephen Court at 3.20pm but the police team deployed at the site noted the arrival time as 3.50pm. The Disaster Management Group too arrived before the Bronto lift.
According to the probe team, firemen not being adequately equipped with rubber gloves and fire-resistant boots and other gear was another fatal flaw.
On the fire brigade’s manpower shortage, the probe team says that it is difficult to believe there was a shortage of firemen at the headquarters that day despite the department as a whole being short-staffed because of the authorities’ lackadaisical attitude.
“The committee has learnt that there was a shortage of around 350 people in 2006 and in 2008 the finance department sanctioned an intake of around 50 per cent of the existing shortage of manpower. Yet till the March 23 fire, no recruitment was made.”
There was “not much slackness” in the police response, though they could have done better in putting traffic restrictions in place to enable the fire tenders to move in faster.
Water supply to the spot came from different pumping stations “through a relay system” when nearby New Market should have been the main source, the committee states.
On the controversial two additional floors of Stephen Court, the probe team says that the CMC has been able to substantiate how permission for construction was first given in 1975 and renewed in 1983, a year before construction began, as first reported by The Telegraph.
The report could, however, blame the caretakers for the building turning into a tinderbox. The temperature on the upper floors rose to 1,500 degrees Centigrade during the fire as they were stacked with inflammable material.
None of the residents of Stephen Court deposed before the committee.
FIVE FINDINGS
• Fire started well before it was spotted
• SOS went to cops, not fire brigade
• Skylifts arrived over an hour late, fire personnel ill-equipped
• Police failed to cordon off traffic to allow fire tenders to move in faster
• No fire-safety measures in building
