Yesterday, the Armenian public was watching the trajectory of the “Surmalu” fire with bated breath. While the rescuers were isolating the fire and searching for the missing,
the topic of the fire was boiling on social media: the news about the victims and survivors, official condolence telegrams were followed by hypotheses and speculations: was this a terrorist attack or not, was Salute to blame or was it hidden? TNT production in “Surmalu”, and whose business interests was the fire in line with?
There is nothing new in this regard. The same confusion and wide spectrum of hypotheses emerge after every disaster that befalls us, be it a fire, an earthquake, a collapse, a major car accident, or a war. But we don’t learn lessons, we don’t take measures to avoid victims and losses in the future, and the reaction is purely situational and operational.
The RA urban planning, fire, and technical safety inspection body justified itself that last year it inspected “Surmalu”, it did its own work, and in the “Yerevan Canning Factory” PB company, which is the same “Surmalu” fair, compliance with the requirements of fire safety and other legislation. more than a dozen violations were found.
Automatic fire extinguishing system and anti-smoke protection system were missing, public catering establishments did not have automatic fire alarm systems, the existing ones did not work either, there were no fire extinguishers in the buildings, the doors did not open outwards, overhead power lines were laid over the roofs with fire-hazardous elements, the building elements were not coated. there was a fire protection solution, the kiosks, booths were located at a distance of less than 8 m from the building, there was no fire fighting pool in the area of the facilities intended for external fire fighting, there were no fire hydrants in the buildings, etc.
In 2021, if we believe the inspection body, the management of “Surmalu” was given time to eliminate the violations. Thus, the inspection body wants to say that the responsibility lies exclusively with the management of the trade center.
Interestingly, during the same inspection period, in April 2021, a fire broke out in Surmalu, which took 3 hours to extinguish. There were no casualties at the time as the stalls caught fire late at night, but people were deprived of the business they had built up over the years. And the inspection body did not draw conclusions, did not tighten control. The head of the body, Gegham Shahbazyan, did not send his inspectors to “Surmalu” once more to see what the situation is, whether the violations have been eliminated, whether there are at least basic fire extinguishers or not.
The management of “Surmalu” is in no hurry to give clarifications. They do not answer calls or emails. A hypothesis is written on the Facebook page of the head of the trade department, Vardan Manukyan, which, of course, cannot be considered an official point of view, but it still proves that they do not realize their guilt for what happened here. He transcribed the opinion of one of the users that the explosion was not similar to the explosion of packaged fireworks and that it is possible that the TNT was brought in bags and filled on the spot. “And TNT explodes from detonation. All it takes is one powerful bomb blast nearby, and the entire TNT storage will explode in an instant. TNT will be found in pennies from the mines, where they are constantly detonating. They slaughtered people for their super profits. At least they could carry out their production in an uninhabited place”, we read on the page of the head of the trade department of “Surmalu”.
When considering the Surmalu – 2022 explosion and the events surrounding it for the past two days, it is striking that the response to the incident was disorganized. Usually, during such accidents, at least an operational response headquarters is created, a news center, where official information is collected and communicated to the public through a single channel, from health, security, law enforcement, at least a basic point, a tent could be set up outside, from where information would be regularly provided to any representative of the government. from:
Instead of all this, a half-baked message from the inspection body about previous inspections was thrown in the public’s face. How could so many people be left at the scene of a disaster when there was a threat of terrorism, let unprepared people organize rallies on Facebook, or let a 911 operator determine who was missing and report regularly as final information? After all, we have a disaster response plan prepared jointly by the Ministry of Defense, the police and the Ministry of Emergency Situations, which was not implemented in any way during this disaster. We have seen many times how various NGOs conduct training for volunteer firefighters.
After all, we have about 100 professional rescuers among the lecturers of the State Institute of Physical Culture and Sports of Armenia, who could be mobilized in an organized way, instead of unprepared people organizing a gathering of volunteer rescuers on Facebook and going to a place where a terrorist act is expected at any moment. We saw officials at the scene of the disaster, standing together with “kutok”, the chief of police on one side, the Speaker of the National Assembly on the other side. No one has a helmet on his head, no mask on his face, no one told the people whether the smoke is dangerous or not, what substance was burned in the fireworks warehouses, what will be its consequences on human health. If an official goes personally, gets hit by smoke and does not understand what he is doing, how can he think about the citizen’s health?
We have already seen this kindergarten of management once during the last war, when disorganized and chaotic tactics cost us thousands of casualties and the loss of a part of the homeland. This is also one of the shortcomings of general country management. And no lesson, no conclusion.
Ամբողջական հոդվածը կարող եք կարդալ այս հասցեով՝ : https://hraparak-am.translate.goog/post/bff9117a7c772e64354aa334dd2348e6?_x_tr_sl=hy&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=nui,sc
© 2008 – 2021 «Հրապարակ օրաթերթ»