They had come with a promise of a new life, but it was to be a final one. The couple, in town for treatment, were discovered in each other’s arms as a fire raged through the hotel, 21 lives in the making of a heartbreak.
You can imagine the scene that greeted the rescuers when they put in a bathroom door on the ground floor of the Flourish Stay B&B in Hauz Rani. There was the couple, who made regular trips to a hospital not far off, in one another’s arms.
Wasim Raja, who is on duty at Max Smart Hospital and was there early on, called it a kind of love you don’t see even at the Taj Mahal. He and his team tried everything from CPR, but there was no answer from them.
Raja says you could tell the woman had some procedure done not long before; there was a mark from surgery on her head. As the fire made its way up the five-storey, they were right there side by side, and in the end, it was the smoke that got to them.
Some of the local cabs knew them. Ikrar, a driver from around the hotel, said he would often put them in his car for a run to the hospital, them and their hopes of a family. In a way, they are the face of what happened that Wednesday morning.
Safety lapses under probe
Now the authorities are looking into the matter. With 21 dead, police and the fire department want to know how a fire could get out of hand in a place with so many restrictions on it.
What we know from the investigation
The word from the investigators is that the way out on the roof was put in a block.
There are reports of cooking heaters in use in a number of guest rooms, which has put the hotel’s safety record in the spotlight.
Police say there have been no small violations here; the whole running of the place is under a microscope. They are still working out exactly how the fire started, looking at everything from the equipment to the way you can get in and out of the building.
Here is what the probe has turned up so far:
– A rooftop exit that was found to be obstructed
– The aforementioned heaters in some of the rooms
– An operation with as many as 25 rooms when only six are allowed
– Some 50 or 60 mobile phones and 30 passports left behind at the scene
Who is being held to account
The owner of the building is in custody. There is a Look Out Circular on him and his wife, and a manhunt is on for the hotel manager who has made himself scarce.
Then there is the human toll. Twenty-one are dead – 12 from other countries and nine Indians. Most were in Delhi for work, business, or to see a doctor.
In one bathroom, a couple met their end side by side. “They were in each other’s arms,” one of the first on the scene put it. It is an image the responders won’t soon forget from a job where they were just too late.
For those who made it out
Hospitals are full of the survivors. Max in Saket has 15 in-house, 13 of them foreigners. Six are on ventilators but holding their own. We’ve seen some progress with them, and the other nine in the ICU and wards are in stable shape. One had to have his spine operated on and is being watched over. Another should be going home by the end of the day.
The staff will tell you the injuries run the gamut, but nobody in the hospital is in extremis. They are on top of it.
A lesson for any of us on the road
You could be the next family in this story. You put up in a no-frills place near a hospital to save on time and money. But you can’t put a price on fire safety.
When you book a room, you might start to ask a few more questions. Check the stairwell, make sure you can find your way out, and if you see something in the room that doesn’t belong, don’t let it slide. It’s the kind of thing that matters when things go wrong.
And for the ones running the show: if you’re supposed to have six rooms and you have 25, you are putting people in harm’s way. That is where the line is drawn between a close call and a disaster.
Down in Malviya Nagar, the authorities have to make good on what they are finding. Think of the pair who came to town to be with a child and left in one another’s arms. We need to see that kind of loss lead to some real change in how we do things.
