LAHORE: The emergency and rescue teams seem to be ill-equipped to remove debris of the four-storey factory that collapsed at Sunder industrial estate on Thursday.

An urban expert and planner is of the view that the way the rescue operation was started showed incompetence of the teams.

“It is not a problem that how much we are equipped or prepared to deal with such disasters; it is sort of incompetence on the part of officials engaged in the removal of debris and rescue of the workers trapped there,” says Ms Ghazal Naeem, an architect by profession who did masters from a well-known building research institute in Japan (Tokyo).

Ms Naeem, who is trained in emergency and disaster management issues, told Dawn on Thursday that none of the five teams (each of 30 to 50 trained people on such emergency operations) trained by the UNDP from 2008 to 2011 after the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan was called by the City District Government Lahore, national or provincial disaster management authority, Rescuee-1122 or anyone in public sector engaged in the rescue activities at the site.

She objected to mobilisation or deployment of massive machinery to remove debris that might increase the death toll. “The way the machinery is being used to remove the debris is absolutely wrong. Trained people never do like this, as they plan to operate equipment under a timeline. When you have to operate an excavator, bulldozer, dozer, grader, drilling machines etc, this all should be under a timing schedule. But here, the machinery is being used excessively without any knowledge and it is really a dangerous act,” Ms Naeem said.

She said before initiating such operations, the trained people always cordon off the area within a 200 meter radius of the building and then check the affected building’s map or drawing. Later the works related to deployment of machinery, their use under a timeline, spreading especially trained sniffer dogs and locating the trapped people are always carried out step by step. “But here, the situation is totally different, as all is being done speedily without any knowledge.”

Ms Naeem said another problem she observed through media footages was the mobility and presence of VVIPs at the site. “The trained people always create silence on the site to hear the hue and cry of the injured people. As soon as they hear, they respond and take out the trapped ones by removing debris very carefully.

Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2015

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