Building basement catches fire

BBMP yet to enforce plan sanction rules; shops in parking spots

By ZAHID H JAVALI

Recently, the basement of the building housing Blackberry on 27th Main Road in Sector 2 caught fire. The shop Paatra Bhandar escaped from getting gutted as nearby shopkeepers teamed up to extinguish the fire. But not until two fire tenders arrived did the situation spring back to normal. It was an excruciating three hours and yet the lesson is yet to be learned.

Overnight, the building owner painted the basement, so any newcomer doesn’t know what had happened. And neither is the BBMP bothered about it. When asked about the fire incident, BBMP assistant executive engineer Ananth Raju said he wasn’t aware of it. When pressed on why basement shops are being allowed, he said, “We are not allowing any new shops in the basement in any sanction plan.”

The truth is that many building owners have rented out the basements to commercial shops when they are meant to be for parking. “When I asked the landlord why he has still not learnt a lesson from the fire mishap in the Blackberry building, the landlord said that renting the basement works out for him,” said one shopkeeper. “If there is so much greed at the expense of human life and valuables, it’s up to the BBMP alone to take action.”

Any new building coming up in HSR Layout should have all the setbacks and parking space. A time will soon come where such buildings will find no tenants because they lack basic fire safety and parking facilities. It’s just simple common sense. “Landlords have become so greedy that they are allowing for shops even near staircases,” said another shopkeeper. “There’s just no breathing area in case of a fire mishap.”

In the Paatra Bhandar fire mishap case, the shopkeeper had kept cardboard boxes underneath the main switch. The small fire due to a possible short circuit spread quickly because these boxes caught fire. Only the timely intervention of the fire brigade saved the fire from getting worse. According to eyewitnesses, the fire was near the generator. If the generator had caught fire, there could have been a major blast.

No trade licence is being issued to basement shops and yet they are openly flouting the rules. We urge AEE Ananth Raju and Joint Commissioner (Bommanahalli) Veerabhadraswamy to put an end to these basement shops across HSR Layout.

Only deterrence will make the landlords learn their lessons and comply with the rules.