Exhausted and my energy run down by the last week’s laborious running around that I slept like a log when Centaurus, the landmark building of Islamabad was ablaze. I wonder how my friend Sardar Tanvir Illyas, the incumbent Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir, who built this building brick by brick, think of this tragedy that was also shared by his fellow Honourable Prime Minister of Pakistan through a tweet to put water on the fire in the words of another former Prime Minister Honourable Choudry Shujat ‘ Mitti Pau’, ( put it under the carpet).
Any event that the Management planned at Centaurus and Honourable Tanvir Illyas ensured to invite me over. One such event was inauguration of Restaurant by the International Hotel chain “Movenpick”, at their roof top that I briefly interacted with his Honourable father, Sardar Illyas and the Movenpick CEO.
Fire is a natural phenomenon and it does occur across the world but how capable and well prepared we are in the fire fighting matters. I found the Centaurus Mall always jam packed, but I never heard of any fire fighting drills that either the Management or the city administration ever planned to sanitise those who occupy the building whether food chains, shops or residents.
Thankfully , we survived a greater tragedy of having not suffered any casualties in the blaze something the notoriously weak structured Margalla Towers in F-10 Sector of Islamabad , couldn’t avoid after it caved in jolted by the 2005 earth quake, the rescue documentary of the international rescue team that the BBC made still makes me wake up in the middle of the night as then I lived in its neighbourhood but still no lessons learnt.
