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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 July - 2 August 2000 Issue No. 492 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 July - 2 August 2000 Issue No. 492
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Remains of the day
By Mariz TadrosA crowd stands behind the police cordon, staring silently at the remains of what used to be a privately-owned textile factory in the industrial working class area of Ezbet Saad, east of Alexandria. A major fire had broken out at the six-storey factory on 19 July, causing it to collapse. Twenty-seven people, including 12 policemen and civil defence workers, were killed and nearly 40 others were injured.
"This is catastrophic," mutters one bystander. Another shakes his head in disbelief. The bulldozers are clearing the area, causing the piles of debris to rise higher and higher. Large rolls of cotton yarn, blackened by smoke, are sprawled all over the place under heaps of mud, bricks, concrete and iron bars.
Witnesses say the fire erupted around 9am in a storage room on the ground floor and quickly spread to the floors above, trapping many workers there. By the time the fire-engines arrived, 45 minutes later, the entire building was in flames.
Mohamed Abdel-Rahim, a civil defence worker in his 20s, who is recovering from an arm injury at the Al-Muwasat Hospital, said it took the fire-fighters some time to force their way into the building because the storage room had been secured by large iron locks. Abdel-Rahim disclosed that it was not before 5.30pm that the fire was extinguished. "A group of civil defence workers were still in the building, checking it out for the last time. As I prepared to walk out of the building, there was a deafening noise and, all of a sudden, the building collapsed and we were trapped under the debris."
Some people outside the building were injured by the falling masonry.
Police Captain Ashraf Ezzat, who works with the emergency services, recalled: "At 5.55pm, I heard a bomb-like explosion; I had never heard anything like it before, it was like doomsday, and then there was dust, mixed with smoke, everywhere. Unable to see or move, I was thrown back a few metres. I woke up in hospital."
Abdel-Rahim and Ezzat were luckier than others, such as police Brigadier General Mohamed Raga'i, commander of the Alexandria fire brigade, and Colonel Ibrahim Abdel-Qader, another brigade officer, who were both killed. They were given a military funeral last Friday.
Prime Minister Atef Ebeid paid a visit to the injured at Al-Muwasat Hospital last Saturday and announced that LE5,000 will be disbursed to the families of each of the dead and injured. The hospital treatment of the latter is at the government's expense. The factory workers will be paid two months' salary while the state seeks to provide them with alternative employment.
Despite the government's assurances, some workers were worried about future work prospects. "Why don't they allow us to re-build the factory? We have mouths to feed, and we don't know whether we will get a job anywhere else," said one worker who asked for his name to be withheld.
An investigating committee is attempting to determine the reasons of the fire. The general belief, however, is that it was started by a short circuit. Material losses are estimated to be worth millions of pounds. The factory was not insured.
Mohamed Bebawi, owner of an embroidery workshop, said that the owner and workers of the collapsed factory were not the only losers. All owners of auxiliary industries associated with textile production stand to lose, Bebawi added. "For example, my factory is completely dependent on doing the embroidery and printing on the underwear produced by the collapsed factory ... There are many factories and industries that are in a similar predicament," he explained.
The volume of unemployment is certain to rise as a result, Bebawi continued. "In addition to the 300 or so workers of the collapsed factory, there are many others who may lose their jobs; we are talking here about hundreds of families."
Yasser Sayed, a friend of the owner, said that the owner did not ensure his factory "because he is a pious man, who believes that the place is guarded by God and that what is fate is fate." Sayed criticised the performance of the fire brigade. "It took them a long time to get here, there were not enough firefighters, and the available resources were not enough," he said. "For example, they arrived in the beginning with only two small fire-engines, which were not sufficient to fight the flames."
Sayed insisted that the owner had not violated any safety regulations. "He had automatic fire-extinguishers installed in the storage room and he had taken all necessary precautions," Sayed said.
But the fire brigade told a very different story. A high-ranking civil defence official, who is recovering from a broken rib, fractured and dislocated shoulder and neck injuries at Al-Muwasat Hospital, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the automatic fire-extinguishers did not work.
The same factory was the scene of a smaller fire that was quickly extinguished last January, the official said.
He argued that technical violations made the fire spread quickly, causing the eventual collapse of the building. The flames rose rapidly in the storage room, he opined, because it was crammed to the ceiling with cotton yarn, cardboard containers and other materials, all stacked together in a very limited space. "Also, there was no ventilation in the storage room, whatsoever; as a result, everything ignited very quickly," he said, pointing out that the intensity of the heat must have also weakened the foundations of the building.
The official argued that cramming four floors with heavy textile equipment on top of a storage room is in complete violation of safety regulations. "The storage room should be at some distance from the working area, because there is always the possibility that the room, stacked with all that highly inflammable cotton, may catch fire," he said. "Moreover, the vibrations of the machinery must have affected the foundations of the building," he added.
"It is very rare for a building to collapse after a fire is extinguished," he said, adding that even in those rare cases, there are "usually advance signs, such as the ceiling caving in or a column cracking but, in this case, it was so sudden."
In an apparent reaction to the Alexandria tragedy, the Council of Governors, headed by Prime Minister Ebeid, decreed on Sunday that all factories should have fire insurance. It also said that a survey will be made of the safety requirements of all factories situated in residential areas.
Many Alexandrians wonder whether industrial safety regulations will be seriously enforced, or whether this is only talk to appease public opinion. "We only react when a disaster takes place and, even then, we don't do enough to prevent a recurrence," sighed a bystander at the site of the collapsed factory.
Relates stories:
Dance of the devil 25 - 31 May 2000
Tragedy at midnight 18 - 24 May 2000
