An oil-tanker carrying fuel for the US forces in Afghanistan exploded and caught fire near the border town of Chaman last Sunday, 14 January. A news picture showed the giant 20-foot tanker lying on its side; its rear end a raging inferno and tongues of flame starting to engulf the vehicle.
Two men stood dangerously near the burning vehicle with a hose trying to douse the flames with water. As I write, I only have the first day's news report which is sketchy. It tells you no one was hurt; that the vehicle was parked when it exploded; that three other tankers which were part of the convoy were removed out of danger; that the cause of the explosion is unkown but the driver is being grilled.
The last line of the report hints at sabotage: "No one had accepted responsibility for the explosion." Experience leads me to conclude that further news will be hushed up since the ill-fated tanker was carrying fuel for US forces in Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, city administration and the provincial government should take serious note of the Chaman incident. Imagine the scene of fire, carnage, chaos and death if such a catastrophy occurred on a busy road in Karachi. The mismanagement of traffic and outdated road safety rules are just two out of several factors which lead one to conclude that such a tragedy is waiting to happen in Karachi.
How casually rules for movement of long vehicles are made and altered. For a few days container carriers and oil-tankers were forbidden to move through the city during peak-hour traffic. The transport mafia managed to have the ban lifted. So on any week day on Khayaban-i-Jami, Sunset Boulevard, Korangi Road and onward to the Super Highway you will find longvehicles hogging the road space.
The entire route from port and refinery to Super Highway remains chock-a-block with cars, buses, bousers, oil-tankers, container carriers, cars in every shape and size, motorcycles, mini vans and last but not least, a donkeycart half carrying, half trailing a sheaf of steel bars. It is the sacred tradition of Karachi's builders to use only donkey carts for hauling construction bars.
So just imagine if an oil tanker were to catch fire in the midts of this traffic mess. We are famous for being wise after the event, but in this case it is imperative to have ready a contingency plan to tackle such an emergency. Ambulances, fire brigade and the traffic police need to practice a drill so that they know just how to co-ordinate and handle the situation. Private and public vehicle drivers have to be schooled how to clear a route for the burning tanker to escape and the emergency vehicles to follow through.
At present nobody knows what they are supposed to do even when they hear an ambulance siren. Some drivers move to the left, some to the right failing to clear a passage for the ambulance to pass. Time is lost and more traffic snarls up than before. One cannot afford such a situation if, God forbid, an oil-tanker were to ignite in peak-hour traffic.
There are safety measures that should be in place for vehicles carrying dangerous material. It is doubtful if water can quench a fierce inferno. It would be a surprise if the two men in Chaman succeeded in dousing the fire in the burning oil-tanker. It must have died out once all the petrol was consumed. Fire extinguishers, those cylinders with pressurised chemical foam ought to be installed in all vehicles carrying inflammable material.
Have you noticed? Nowadays it is a rare oil-tanker which has the warning sign painted. Even when it was, it had become a decorative element of the colourful truck art. The artists preferred English. "Danger. Highly Inflammable" was spelt in a variety of amusing ways and the lettering had become ornate. As for the international danger symbol, the skull and cross bones, it was never used, or may be it was used rarely because I don't recall ever seeing it. Perhaps the artist thought this was a "kafir" symbol and it was against his principles to draw a human face...or...skull.
However, the best and safest thing would be to totally ban transportation of dangerous material by road and revert to the use of the railway. Goods transportation by road became popular when the Super Highway was built. Previously everything went by railway, including petrol and diesel. You can still see the second world war oil-tankers rusting in shunting yards of Karachi and Lahore. What the railway lost the road gained. So in actual terms the Super Highway did not improve the economy. The money railway was earning from goods transportation was diverted to the pockets of truck owners.
Actually, there has been a national loss since the railway become a sick enterprise, unable to sustain itself only on passenger transportation. Money is being wasted to buy new engines and introduce fast passenger trains. These measures have not injected new life in Pakistan Railways is obvious if you consider the ill-maintained tracks, collapsing railway bridges and train accidents whose frequency increases year by year. The system is a picture of neglect. Ayub Khan's government did not foresee what would happen to Karachi once road transportation became popular with the opening of the Super Highway. All successive governments have been equally myopic.
The city gained a transport mafia. Hundreds of trucks and tankers roll in and out of the city every day and all of them, including the city's bus service is owned by transport operators from NWFP and Punjab. In the 1980s they boasted that if they held a wheel jam they could paralyse the whole city. It was no idle boast.
What happened to roads which were not built to take heavy duty traffic was nothing compared to the problems created by the kuchi abadies that sprang up anywhere there was an empty plot large enough to accommodate the huts and trucks of the transport mafia. They cut into water pipes, hooked into electricity poles, polluted the whole place of their bastis. Ironically railway land was often commandeered. In their wake came the bara markets, drug smugglers and, of course the gun culture-all of which the city espoused. It is they who brought the Afghan refugees to Karachi. In Khalid Husseini's novel about Afghan refugees, "The Kite Runner", which is based on his own experience, the main character Amir and his father, along with others is smuggled across the border in an oil-tanker. It is the Super Highway which initiated the military as an entrepreneur when the National Logistic Cell (NLC) was commissioned to transport rice to Karachi for export and oil from the refineries to military bases upcountry. After that many other non-combat units, dairy farming for instance, began operating commercially.
I think Karachi will be a safer place if dangerous material is transported by rail rather than by road. Evil ideas are quick to spread and Karachi always bears the brunt. If the Chaman incident turns out to be sabotage it could spark trouble for this city. It is for the city administration and Sindh Government to be prepared. As for me, I am already busy muttering "Jultu Jalaaltu".