Let’s set all these slums on fire

Chennai slums are under the threat of frequent fire accidents. Where does the fire break out from? Travelling through the Chennai slums...

Chennai, February 4: One month passed after the calendar turned and a new decade began. The year that passed left no sign of hope for Chennai’s slum-dwellers. The year 2009 instilled a new fear in their minds; of fire breaking out from unknown sources which reduces their huts, and lives, to ashes.

According to the register of Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Services (data from January 2009 up to December 2009 for the Chennai city alone, collected from the Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Services Control Room, Egmore, Chennai), of 263 cases of fire accidents (out of which some were in fishermen’s settlements) in slums, 691 huts were destroyed which caused a loss of over Rs. 50 lakhs. There is no information on the number of deaths except that in the cases of “accidents” at Sheela Nagar, Madippakkam where three of a four-member family were burnt to death and at Mandapam road, Kiruppakkam where a 12-year-old girl died.

The register has no record of five deaths in the accident at JJ Nagar, Korukkuppettai or the case of one death at Ponnusami Nagar, Perambur; both of which were reported by the media. Also it is mentioned only as “so many huts” for the number of huts destroyed in the cases of major accidents at JJ Nagar, Ponnusami Nagar, Adambakkam, Tachinamkutham, SS Nagar and many where. In the register it is shown only 75 huts been destroyed in SS Nagar, Vyasarpadi, where there were media reports showing it to be more than 200 huts. The estimate of loss of properties is way off the actual loss.

There is no separate register for the fire accidents in slums or any focused attention to the unprecedented increase in the number of such cases. An additional reading of the increasing number of huts demolished or families evacuated from the slums in the city brings the missing parts to form the full canvas of the issue. The politics of negligence in this case is clearly the politics of eviction and extinction.

Sirumbai (55), who lives in Gandhi Nagar, Perungudi had lost her hut in a fire accident at the colony on September 23. She is the only bread-winner in her four-member family. After the hut got destroyed by the fire she has managed to get another hut for rent in the same colony. “It will cost a minimum of Rs. 30,000 to build a new hut. Where can I get that much amount?” she grieved. All 50 families who lost their huts and other properties got only Rs.2,000 each as compensation by the government.

Panjali, another woman in the same colony, says that her younger brother was severely injured and lost his leg by the fire and it took more than Rs. 15,000 for his medical expenses. Those like Panjali’s family who had been staying in rented huts were not paid the compensation. “We don’t have anything, not even a hut. But we have not been given anything,” said Panjali.

Pazhaniyamma, a puttu (steam cake) vendor who lives in Awaipuram lost her hut by a fire accident in their colony on May 25 which burnt more than 200 huts in the area. She got a loan of rupees one lakh from a local money lender with a high interest rate to rebuild her hut.  She says mockingly, “The compensation amount was sufficient only for five days’ food for the family.”

The families who lost their huts also lost their valuable documents including ration cards. Therefore, they are unable to buy the one-rupee-a-kilo rice from the local PDS ration shop. “We have applied for new ration cards just days after the accident. But months after, the authority pays no attention to it.”- says one of the victims.

The loss of ration card and other certificates leaves no proof for their identity or existence. Most of the slums which caught major fire accidents were listed to be evacuated by the government for various ‘developmental’ purposes such as bridges, fly-over, road widening and so on.

The slum in Shenoy Nagar was listed to be evacuated for a flyover to be constructed on the site along the Cooem river. The fire broke out here on the same day that the authorities fixed as the deadline for the families there to vacate the huts. “None of us still know the source of fire which broke out at around 4 O’clock in the evening,” said Pazhaniyamma from the place. Anushya (47), who has been living in the colony for over 27 years said, “They (officials) had come here three days before the accident and threatened us to vacate the place in three days. It was on a Saturday they had come here and the fire had broken out exactly three days after, on Monday”

A boy from the colony showed me the deserted river bank where numerous huts stood before they were razed to the ground. Only five-six families have managed to rebuild their huts there by taking loans from local money lenders. Those who could not afford to it have moved to rented huts in the nearby colonies. Srinivasan from the colony said, “Even if they (the government) construct the fly-over here, we won’t get any new houses (at the rehabilitation centre or else where) since they are not demolishing our huts. They would say that our huts are not destroyed by them. It seems that the fire was a boon to them.”

A fact finding team of concerned citizens had found that in MGR Nagar, Nandambakkam authorities had placed boards at the accident site days after the mishap saying not to rebuild houses there. They had created fences there in order to prevent the victims enter the site again. “After the accidents, the victims at many places were forcibly displaced to other places where they were not willing to go,” said A Marx, the state organiser of the People’s Union for Human Rights and one of the members of the fact-finding team.

Santi, a flower seller, who lives in Perungudi showed the interiors of her small hut behind the railway station here. A single room and a kitchen roofed by coconut leaves, there live Santi with her husband and sister. One has to bow head inside the hut not to hit on the ceiling. There is little space left for anything as their belongings swell out from their positions. The kitchen is enmeshed with electricity wires leaving a high possibility for short-circuit. The kerosene stove is placed at a platform just one metre below the roof. A tiny lamp was still flaming before a small Pillaiyarar idol placed at an arrangement for prayers in a corner of the room.

A George, a fire officer in the city says that there are incidents when rats take these kinds of small lamps to the roof of the huts which causes fire accidents in slums. Does Santi know that even the rat is a part of this society which looks down upon slums and murmurs, “Let’s set all these slums on fire?”

** Postscript: Pazhaniyamma, a victim of the fire accident at Shenoy Nagar, said that she and her family are ready to go to any where else if the government is asking them to vacate the colony. She said that they simply can’t survive such fire accidents which take along every thing they have. But eviction-rehabilitation process is yet another story.