PAKISTAN: Gas explosion highlights need to separate industry from homes

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

LAHORE, 5 May 2005 (IRIN) - Several ruptured gas cylinders poke out of the grey rubble which is all that remains of a three-storey residential block in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore. The building collapsed after a gas explosion early on Tuesday, killing at least 32 people as they slept.

The incident is the latest in a series involving the commercial use of premises in residential areas that have killed many people in the past five years.

Gas cylinder and chemical storage facilities, filling stations and fireworks factories are all to be found dotted around the residential areas of Lahore, capital of the populous Punjab province. These are just disasters waiting to happen, say residents and safety officials. Although the law makes it clear that such industrial concerns should be separate from homes, the regulation is largely ignored in a city where rent is high and free space is in short supply.

The building that collapsed on Tuesday in the densely populated Allama Iqbal area, housed an ice cream factory, workers' quarters and low-rent apartments. Gas cylinders had been stored in the basement of the building. Three or four nearby homes and several vehicles were damaged in the blast. Police say the dead include eight people from the same family. Rescue workers gave up their search for survivors late on Wednesday.

"We always feared it would happen one day," said a bandaged Sardar Ahmed, 34, as he was treated in hospital. He was sleeping on the second floor when the blast happened.

Only last week, a huge fire at a textile chemicals warehouse in another residential area on Lahore's Bund Road reduced four nearby houses to ashes. The intense heat from the blaze caused more than 3,000 chemical drums stored under a warehouse shelter to start exploding one after the other as the fire raged. Two people, one a young girl, sustained burns as residents in nearby houses ran for their lives.

"Still dozens of chemical warehouses and factories are operating alongside the Bund Road illegally," Mohammad Kamran told IRIN, a few yards from his house which was gutted in the fire last Thursday. "All the savings, clothes, shoes, everything has burnt," he said. "Who will compensate us?"

At least nine people were killed and four others injured in an explosion at an illegal fireworks factory in Lahore in May 2003. Despite this, the manufacture and sale of dangerous fireworks continues unabated in congested areas of the old part of the city, posing a serious threat to both public safety and to property.

Local people are concerned that a major fire in this quarter of the city could have catastrophic consequences.

"These congested areas of the city have too narrow streets for any rescue or fire-fighting vehicles to pass," a resident of Lohari area, Asif Butt told IRIN.

A market owned by a local government official was gutted when a firework manufacturing unit exploded some eight years back, he said.

Rehan Butt, a neighbour, told reporters local residents had repeatedly complained to the local authority and to the building's owner about the threat posed by the gas storage facility and asked that the cylinders be removed. No action had been taken against the owner of the business. But Lahore's City District Government head Mian Amir Mahmood told IRIN he had received no complaints about gas cylinders in the building.

"We are busy in the rescue operation. But we will investigate and I pledge not to spare anyone found responsible," he said.

He agreed there is a need to impose effectively laws that forbid industrial production or storage near housing and make the use of residential properties for commercial purposes illegal.

Several facilities dispense liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to thousands of auto-rickshaws in Lahore's residential areas as they ply their trade throughout the city. Mahmood said he had ordered the gas filling stations to be closed.

"They won't be allowed to do this business, come what may," he said.

[ENDS]