Investigating market fires

Malawi has experienced market fires with such regularity that each of the country’s cities has experienced its own fires. Market fires have also happened in a number of district markets, perhaps the most severe of which was the Mangochi Market fire.

Many do not understand the cause of these fires, but there is hope that this pattern might be broken with the State President’s directive for a ministerial committee to investigate the market fires.

In the 1980s, I trained as a firefighter with the Blantyre City Council’s Fire Department at Ginnery Corner. I was a student at H.H.I Secondary School then, and the school had been selected to participate in a programme called the President’s Award Scheme. Secondary school students would choose certain vocations that were on offer.

There were public and private institutions that had been selected to offer training in the vocations. Over a period of two years, I trained as a firefighter. The firefighting training was offered under the then chief fire officer of Blantyre City Council Mr Namfuko.

Training as a firefighter and later on as a public health specialist taught me several things I would not have ordinarily known. What is fire? What is needed for a fire to erupt? What is needed to stop a fire? Knowing and understanding the answers to these questions go a long way in fire prevention and fighting.

Three things are needed to start a fire. If any one of these is absent, there cannot be a fire. The three things are (1) fuel (e.g., dried leaves, wood, paper, cloth, petrol); (2) a heat source (e.g. matches); and (3) oxygen.

As I have stated before, any of these two without the third thing will not result in a fire. Once all the three items are in contact, you have a fire. So, if we have to prevent a fire or stop a fire, we need to remove any one of these three partners. For example, pouring water on charcoal does not remove the charcoal and does very little to remove oxygen, but it cools the ambers such that there is no heat. Covering a burning sofa with a wet blanket cools it and smothers it so that the amount of oxygen to enable the fire to continue is reduced.

Let us now go to the presidential directive for a ministerial committee to investigate the market fires. For the most part, this is a welcome initiative if, through this committee, we can stem the fires. However, there is always a “but” in these things and this is where I want to concentrate for the remainder of the article.

Firstly, this country is known for having commissions and investigations whose findings are either inconclusive, not owned by key stakeholders or are worthless. I will give an example of the bus-train crash at the rail crossing in the 1980’s at Chirimba in Blantyre. Former president the late Kamuzu Banda instituted a commission of inquiry whose recommendation was that all road-rail crossings should have gates to close when trains are passing. There are no gates at Chirimba to date.

The second problem will be illustrated by the experience I have in my field of work—public health. We have hundreds of questions that we wish were answered through investigations (research).

However, we do not allow anyone, regardless of how well intentioned they may be to start off an investigation without having thought through the problem. We ask that they write their question down, what is known about the question, what is not known and therefore, needs to be known, why it would be important to know it, and how the person is going to conduct the investigation.

Does the person or do the persons have the necessary tools and expertise to answer the question that is being asked? What are the challenges expected and how will the investigator deal with these? Only then can a person be allowed to investigate?

Can we ask the ministers these questions and get answers that will satisfy us? n

—The author is a trained firefighter. He is professor of public health at the University of Malawi-College of Medicine.