A disaster waiting to happen

by The Editor

It was only a couple of issues ago that we had written about the rot in Chennai’s real estate. One of the instances quoted was a fire in a wholly unauthorised structure that continued to remain in occupation despite the authorities sealing it. That incident claimed four lives. The latest episode, though fortunately not causing any deaths, was on a far bigger scale. We allude to the fire in a multistoried garment showroom in T’Nagar.

This is an area that has become a showpiece for construction violations and the above-mentioned structure was no exception. Permission had been granted for just four floors, but the management had merrily added another four. An administration that either did not care, or was in cahoots with the violators, a judiciary that took its own time to come to any conclusive judgement, an owner who was only interested in making money even if it meant bending all the rules, and a vast horde of shoppers who kept the place going, not in the least bothered that the place had come up in contravention of all ethics – all of them ensured that no action was ever taken. In this lot, it is perhaps the shopper who is to be forgiven, for if he/she is to take the stance of shopping only in buildings that are put up in strict conformance of the law, then shopping as an activity may have to be abandoned altogether in our city.

The fire raged for two days. Given the way the building was constructed, fire tenders could hardly reach it. Those in the neighbourhood had to be summarily evicted for no fault of theirs beyond the fact that they chose to live next to a partially illegal edifice. Commuters were put to enormous hardship owing to blockage of traffic and the smoke caused distress to many in the area. Over 700 households in T’Nagar were starved of water and close to six lakh litres of this precious commodity were spent on dousing the inferno. The only saving grace, as mentioned earlier, was that nobody died, though some people, especially those in the fire service, did suffer injuries. The fire broke out early in the morning and so there were no shoppers and traffic on the road was also thin.

The aftermath saw the usual blame game being played out. The Minister blamed the owner for violations. The owner admitted that his structure was in contravention of permits, but blamed it on bad advisors. The electricity and water supply departments blamed the courts that had granted stay orders against sealing the structure thereby forcing the departments to supply power and water to this edifice. The courts have not spoken, but if they did, we are sure they would blame the committee of the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) that they had formed to go into the matter. The CMDA said its monitoring committee was quite active – it had met 62 times, with the last meeting a day before the fire. What was not said was that the meeting, like all earlier ones, had partial attendance and was inconclusive. In short, nobody was really to blame. But we did have a four-storey building sprout another four floors and merrily carry on business for several years, cocking a snook at the law. Ours is an administration that believes not in punitive action, but in regularisation of illegal structures, in exchange for a fee.

All of this has exposed the rot in the entire business of constructing commercial buildings and T’Nagar is the worst of the lot. What is saddening is that no action has ever been taken and probably never will be. In this context, it is worthwhile to note that we wrote an editorial in 2008, when a fire broke out in another illegal structure, next to the present one. We are publishing that below. That building was soon back in business, as we are sure the present one will also be.

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