Laughter, Then Horror, as Flames Engulfed Upscale Mumbai Restaurants - Sensationalist Headlines

[URL="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/31/world/asia/india-mumbai-restaurant-fire.html?ribbon-ad-idx=3&rref=world/asia"]source[/URL] [QUOTE]MUMBAI, India — Aksheeta Doshi Shroff and a few family members were relaxing at 1 Above, a rooftop restaurant in a trendy district of Mumbai, when a small fire broke out shortly after midnight on Friday. In the first few moments, Ms. Shroff said, patrons at 1 Above did not seem panicked. Some, she said, laughed and took pictures of the flames. Music continued playing. She saw no attempt by staff to evacuate, and heard no alarms. But the fire turned lethal, and by the early morning, [URL="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/world/asia/mumbai-fire-restaurant.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fkai-schultz&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection"]14 people were dead[/URL] at 1 Above and a neighboring restaurant, Mojo’s Bistro. Three people at 1 Above have been charged with culpable homicide, and several municipal officials were suspended for failing to enforce fire safety codes. The fire quickly engulfed the rooftop, with flames spreading along cloth canopies that collapsed on people’s heads as alcohol bottles exploded. There were no sprinklers or fire extinguishers, Ms. Shroff and two other witnesses said, and no clearly marked escape route. She had to jump a glass barrier in the restaurant to make her way out. Ms. Shroff, 30, ended up at King Edward Memorial Hospital with burn injuries. “So many people have died in front of me,” said Ms. Shroff, who had to cut off 30 percent of her hair after pieces of the burning canopy and tarpaulin fell on her head.[/QUOTE]

How the fuck does this even happen.

Mumbai is filled with a ton of buildings that aren't to regulation in the fucking slightest. Unsurprisingly, as India's currently most populated city, you're going to have a lot of shortcuts being taken as contractors cut corners to shave on costs, and inspectors are readily paid off to give a building a "pass" so it can be used as soon as possible.

I'm really confused as to why the initial reaction was to laugh at the fire and take pictures. "The fire can't hurt you if you aren't afraid of it."

[QUOTE=aznz888;53026814]Mumbai is filled with a ton of buildings that aren't to regulation in the fucking slightest. Unsurprisingly, as India's currently most populated city, you're going to have a lot of shortcuts being taken as contractors cut corners to shave on costs, and inspectors are readily paid off to give a building a "pass" so it can be used as soon as possible.[/QUOTE] Yeah one of the related articles is "Deadly Building Collapse in India Caused by Illegal Alterations, Police Say" and that sounds pretty bad.

[QUOTE=mugofdoom;53026858]I'm really confused as to why the initial reaction was to laugh at the fire and take pictures. "The fire can't hurt you if you aren't afraid of it."[/QUOTE] i'm guessing they thought "someone [I]HAS[/I] to take care of this soon, right?" especially if the fire started small, there's such a heavy expectation of safety that i guess people don't even recognize the threat

I know this place, I ate there last year. It's unsurprising and par for the course - the entire thing is fueled by corruption and the situation won't change, even after the furor dies down :frown:. A few things that's missing from the context of this story that I thought I should add, being a former Mumbaikaar (Term used for residents of the city): a) Due to some unfortunate circumstances and geography (Mumbai being similar to New York in that it's basically interconnected islands with coastline on most of the developed side), a great deal of the cities development falls under the ambit of the Central government, in Delhi. Why? Because of something called the CRZ, which was a law that was passed requiring properties within a certain distance of the coast to require central government clearance before undergoing any modifications/redevelopment as they, as coastal zones, are under federal protection to prevent damage to the ecosystem (although one could argue that human habitation has probably done more to annihilate anything on the coast than any building construction has :v:). My parents home in Mumbai is caught in the same problem - it's an extremely old building that needs to be redeveloped, but asking for central government clearance to do it is next to impossible and an extremely expensive affair because of all the palms that need to be greased (some ministers expect a free apartment in the redeveloped property as "compensation for their time") to even land it on the right table in Delhi. Unfortunately, due to the nature of Mumbai's design, a metric [I]fuck ton[/I] of buildings fall under these zones, making it next to fucking impossible to get any work done. Enter a corrupt Municipality, which looks the other way when it comes to enforcing these rules and the builders to do whatever the fuck they want to make money. The same sort of archaic, bureaucratic bullshit exists even for re-zoning. The property where this happened, Kamala Mills, was, like a lot of places in the area, former mills (hence the name). As these mills slowly closed down and the properties were re-zoned for commercial purposes, the laws controlling these zones remained the same, which was basically a way for the local municipality to extort builders here into paying more to look the other way. Due to its central location, most obliged. b) Some of you will remember the jugaad mentality I mentioned earlier. This is basically a great example of what jugaad is - cutting corners to achieve an end result, with caution thrown to the wind. Only this jugaad cost people their lives. In most cases, a form of jugaad is often to go ahead with the changes regardless and [I]if[/I] the BMC should show up, bribe them to go away after asking for forgiveness and pleading ignorance (even if they knew exactly what they were doing). It's honestly not uncommon during the monsoon season to find out that some building or the other collapsed, killing all its occupants. Nothing in the country will change until India figures out how to tackle the issue of pervasive and systemic corruption.