Playing with fire

As local units are short of firefighting equipment, we are at a perennial risk of loss of life and property.

On Monday evening, the day of Gai Tihar , a massive fire broke out at a house in Putalibazar Municipality-1, Syangja. The police, the army and the municipality’s fire brigade were summoned within minutes. The police came first and joined the locals in their desperate attempts to put down the fire with whatever equipment they had. Then the army arrived and began the rescue work in a slightly more organised manner. But the fire truck, which was less than a kilometre away from the incident site, took almost an hour to get there. By then, the 50-year-old house was already a skeleton of baked stones and charcoaled saal beams.