Up to Monday morning, Damu Nagar in Mumbai’s Kandivali East suburb was a densely-packed slum settlement with at least 5,000 shanties made of bamboo, metal sheets and a tarpaulin. By evening, after multiple gas cylinder explosions triggered a fire that raged for more than three hours, the slum was reduced to a sprawling expanse of flattened ash and mangled metal.
According to official records, two people died and at least 11 were critically injured in the blaze that gutted an estimated 2,000 homes. On Tuesday morning, however, distraught residents sifting through their charred belongings claimed that the toll is likely to be higher.
“We heard explosions every two seconds. At least 200 cylinders must have burst,” said Vanita Maske, who was at home with her nine-year-old son when the fire began to spread from the top of the hillock where Damu Nagar is located to the rest of the slum. “The flames came so quickly we had no time to grab any valuables from home. We just ran. And many people in the slum are missing.”
Despite the scenes of widespread destruction, the tragedy at Damu Nagar could have been much worse had the fire occurred 16 years ago. Before the year 2000, Damu Nagar was a slum full of pukka houses made of brick, and each house had at least one storey above the ground floor rooms. In 2000, the civic authorities carried out large-scale slum demolition in the settlement, razing the brick homes on the grounds that the land on which they were built belonged to the forest department.
“We eventually rebuilt our homes with bamboo and metal sheets, and we’ve lived like this for 15 years, but with these materials we have not been able to build additional floors,” said Rahul Kharat, a fruit juice seller whose eight-member family has no possessions left now beyond the clothes they were wearing when they escaped Monday’s fire.
Some of the lanes leading out of the Damu Nagar are not even two-feet wide, so when Kharat began to run from the flames along with hundreds of other families, he was caught in a stampede-like situation. “People were tumbling over each other and getting crushed. If this had happened when we had higher homes and more residents, I can’t imagine how we would have escaped on time,” said Kharat. “On the other hand, pukka homes would not have caught fire so easily and quickly.”
How tall is safe?
While Kharat and other Damu Nagar residents are candid enough to admit that taller and denser slums could spell disaster during emergencies, Mumbai’s municipal corporation is mulling over a plan to increase the legally permissible height of slum houses from the current 14 feet to 18 feet. The plan is to be discussed at a meeting on December 14, but according a Mid-day report, corporators from different parties are already keen to see the proposal approved.
The 14-feet limit allows slums to build ground-plus-one structures right now; if the official height is raised to 18 feet, slum dwellers could easily build two more floors above the ground level. Of course, slums across Mumbai have a history of flouting such restrictions and already, there are several slums that illegally rise much higher than 18 feet, with two or more floors built above the ground floor.
“Rules on slum height have consistently been violated in Mumbai, but people cannot be blamed for that – they have no other option at a time when even the middle-classes cannot afford homes,” said Simpreet Singh, an activist working on the rights of slum dwellers. “But over-densification of slums makes residents vulnerable to all kinds of accidents, as we have already seen in the past few years.”
Singh is alluding, specifically, to three fires that broke out on either side of Bandra station in Mumbai in the past four years. In April, a fire in Shastri Nagar, a slum adjoining the railway station in Bandra West, required eight fire engines to control. Although no casualties were reported, slum dwellers lost their belongings for the second time in two years. In March 2013, a fire in the same slum had gutted 150 homes and left 17 injured. Before that, in March 2011, a major fire broke out in the Garib Nagar slum in Bandra East, leaving more than 1,000 homes burnt to ashes.
In both slums, residents had illegally built homes with multiple storeys and found it difficult to escape when the fires broke out. After the fires, residents rebuilt their homes in the same manner because they had nowhere else to go, but they also admitted that they had no exit routes in case of a fire.
“Fire safety is definitely compromised when a slum is too dense, both vertically and horizontally,” said Singh.
According to official records, two people died and at least 11 were critically injured in the blaze that gutted an estimated 2,000 homes. On Tuesday morning, however, distraught residents sifting through their charred belongings claimed that the toll is likely to be higher.
A view of the blackened remains of Damu Nagar slum, a day after the fire.
“We heard explosions every two seconds. At least 200 cylinders must have burst,” said Vanita Maske, who was at home with her nine-year-old son when the fire began to spread from the top of the hillock where Damu Nagar is located to the rest of the slum. “The flames came so quickly we had no time to grab any valuables from home. We just ran. And many people in the slum are missing.”
Residents like Vanita Maske lost all their legal documents in the fire. Many also lost their means of livelihood, particularly women who had invested in sewing machines to earn a living through stitching (below).
Despite the scenes of widespread destruction, the tragedy at Damu Nagar could have been much worse had the fire occurred 16 years ago. Before the year 2000, Damu Nagar was a slum full of pukka houses made of brick, and each house had at least one storey above the ground floor rooms. In 2000, the civic authorities carried out large-scale slum demolition in the settlement, razing the brick homes on the grounds that the land on which they were built belonged to the forest department.
“We eventually rebuilt our homes with bamboo and metal sheets, and we’ve lived like this for 15 years, but with these materials we have not been able to build additional floors,” said Rahul Kharat, a fruit juice seller whose eight-member family has no possessions left now beyond the clothes they were wearing when they escaped Monday’s fire.
Some of the lanes leading out of the Damu Nagar are not even two-feet wide, so when Kharat began to run from the flames along with hundreds of other families, he was caught in a stampede-like situation. “People were tumbling over each other and getting crushed. If this had happened when we had higher homes and more residents, I can’t imagine how we would have escaped on time,” said Kharat. “On the other hand, pukka homes would not have caught fire so easily and quickly.”
How tall is safe?
While Kharat and other Damu Nagar residents are candid enough to admit that taller and denser slums could spell disaster during emergencies, Mumbai’s municipal corporation is mulling over a plan to increase the legally permissible height of slum houses from the current 14 feet to 18 feet. The plan is to be discussed at a meeting on December 14, but according a Mid-day report, corporators from different parties are already keen to see the proposal approved.
The 14-feet limit allows slums to build ground-plus-one structures right now; if the official height is raised to 18 feet, slum dwellers could easily build two more floors above the ground level. Of course, slums across Mumbai have a history of flouting such restrictions and already, there are several slums that illegally rise much higher than 18 feet, with two or more floors built above the ground floor.
“Rules on slum height have consistently been violated in Mumbai, but people cannot be blamed for that – they have no other option at a time when even the middle-classes cannot afford homes,” said Simpreet Singh, an activist working on the rights of slum dwellers. “But over-densification of slums makes residents vulnerable to all kinds of accidents, as we have already seen in the past few years.”
Singh is alluding, specifically, to three fires that broke out on either side of Bandra station in Mumbai in the past four years. In April, a fire in Shastri Nagar, a slum adjoining the railway station in Bandra West, required eight fire engines to control. Although no casualties were reported, slum dwellers lost their belongings for the second time in two years. In March 2013, a fire in the same slum had gutted 150 homes and left 17 injured. Before that, in March 2011, a major fire broke out in the Garib Nagar slum in Bandra East, leaving more than 1,000 homes burnt to ashes.
In both slums, residents had illegally built homes with multiple storeys and found it difficult to escape when the fires broke out. After the fires, residents rebuilt their homes in the same manner because they had nowhere else to go, but they also admitted that they had no exit routes in case of a fire.
“Fire safety is definitely compromised when a slum is too dense, both vertically and horizontally,” said Singh.
A woman from Damu Nagar sits amidst the ruins of her home.
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