Less than a fortnight ago, 235 people died and more than 100 were critically injured in Brazil’s most lethal fire in half a century when a blaze started in a packed nightclub in the southern city of Santa Maria.
In an interview with the director of the Civil Protection Department, Patrick Murgo, it transpired that the emergency organisation frequently came across fire exits in nightclubs in Malta that were locked with a padlock.
As the director stressed, leaving fire exits locked thoroughly defeated their purpose of ensuring there was a fire escape route in case of an emergency, including multiple fire escapes that were well marked.
The reason nightclub owners in Malta, and elsewhere, broke the law on health and safety in public places and took the risk of leaving emergency fire exits padlocked was driven by financial greed.
If the fire exits were openable – as they should be – the nightclub owner would have to employ additional personnel to guard and control access. It is thought that, in Brazil, security guards actually stopped the first students who tried to flee from the fire, believing they were attempting to leave the entertainment spot without paying for drinks.
As details of the horrific tragedy in Santa Maria begin to emerge, it is clear that a catalogue of errors caused this most lethal of fires. It was started by a spark from a flare lit by the band on stage and this set light to soundproofing foam on the ceiling. Flames spread fast, releasing toxic fumes and short-circuiting the power supply. To exacerbate matters, a club whose official capacity was 690 contained about 1,000 people.
Worst of all, there were no working fire escapes and most of the deaths were caused by crushing or asphyxiation. The public health licence and the fire safety plans for the club had expired.
Malta has thankfully been spared anything similar. But it does not take a difficult leap of the imagination to realise that, but for the grace of God, it could quite easily happen here too in any one of the crowded dance venues in Paceville or elsewhere.
The Health and Safety Monitoring Board and the Malta Tourism Authority conduct a number of spot checks on places of entertainment to ensure compliance with regulations. A risk assessment is performed and the owner of the establishment is instructed about what changes to make or additional precautions to take to render the place safe. Each building is also assigned an ‘occupancy rate’ to avoid overcrowding but, according to the CPD director, as in Brazil, there are many instances where this is being exceeded.
Regrettably, as so often happens across the whole field of health and safety in Malta, the Health and Safety Monitoring Board is too small to cope and this inevitably limits the number of establishments it is able to assess. Moreover, as Mr Murgo pointed out, there needs to be a shift in mentality from owners of establishments who need to be persuaded to adopt a sensible “balance between security and safety”.
It is the responsibility of the owner to comply with the assessments made by health and safety experts.
But, ultimately, as in so many other fields in this country, if those assessments and laws are not backed up by tough enforcement by having the owner’s operating licence withdrawn, it would not be beyond the bounds of probability that a terrible accident could occur in a Maltese nightclub as happened so tragically in Brazil.