Fire destroys many Heritage Buildings in Shimla

 Fire destroys many Heritage Buildings in Shimla

The year is 1957, I cannot remember the date, but my high school exams were over and it was a free time for me to loaf around waiting for my results to come. It was summer time, probably around 8:00 a.m., when my father came back from his work in Gunj Bazaar, which usually ends around 1:00 p.m. He brought the bad news that Himachal Dham, the Himachal Government office building (Himachal was not a state yet) has caught fire and is burning. That day the Gunj Bazaar had reduced activity, hence he came back home a bit early. He very strictly forbade me to stay away from the fire mishap area. 

Was I, the obedient son going to miss out the excitement? I don't suppose so. I heard my friends whistle call to collect. Three whistles were a call of an emergency. My parents also heard the whistles, but ignored it because they knew that no matter how much they forbade me, I would not miss the excitement, so they looked the other way and I quietly slipped out.

When we were some distance away from the building, we saw thick black smoke coming out. We couldn't get close because a lot of people like us had collected and the police were trying to keep the spectators away. The local fire department was doing its best.

In Shimla, outside the city core, there is no known arrangement to put out these large fires, although the Shimla fire department lead by Fire Marshal Dhir was doing his best to put it out, but chances were next to nil. Fire hydrants were built in the water supply system for the city core. Farther away there were none. In this case as well, there were no hydrants near the building as it was located on a side road beyond Chaura Maidan. Consequently, the effort to extinguish the fire was to use CO2 extinguishers, sand buckets and a water tank truck with limited water supply. By the time we got there, the tanker had finished the water and had gone for a refill. The foregoing effort was partially successful. Smoke was still billowing out on one side, that means that there is an active fire. I saw probably employees and volunteers trying to salvage whatever papers and files they could. They had formed a human chain to speedily salvage until the water tanker arrived back and started the water spray on the other side.

We the15 years old boys wished to lend a hand, but the fire marshal and the police kept us away. The fire had started at about 3.00am. The night security guards took a while to summon the Fire Brigade. If they were alert, they could have put out that fire quickly. They had enough CO2 extinguishers in the building and some sand pails to contain the fire. They did not do it, hence the common gossip was that they have either been asleep or that they were party to the fire. What we saw 8 hours later was that the building had been reduced to a burning cinder. Two floors had collapsed and on one side there was smoke and flames still billowing out. The big crowd which had gathered there was being pushed back by the police. 

It was a typical British style wood building. Most of the wood had dried over the past 50 years and if left unattended, it will catch fire and spread rapidly. Before that, the building housed the British Foreign Office and was well maintained. With the relocation of the Himachal offices, it is unclear how much effort had been put into preventing fires.

There was an investigation, there were meetings, and there was no conclusion. Hence, no remedial measures were ever put in place to prevent any such future mishaps in other heritage buildings. That was a big mistake. If that fire accident could happen in that building, it could happen in other places too. I guess it was an electrical fire that went unnoticed for a period of time. In fact, all of these buildings were electrified in and around the 1920s, when electricity from the Chaba generating station became available.

In 1957, the Himachal was a Union territory formed by combining 26 princely states in the Mahasu district after independence. In those days, Shimla was part of Punjab, so the Himachal offices were guests in Punjab territory. It was Punjab's responsibility to take care of the guests' offices by providing services within their territory, but it was Himachal's responsibility to ensure the security of its own offices. It most likely was carelessness. Earlier, fires occurred, but never at this scale. 

Electricity arrived in Shimla in 1912 or so. The Chaba Hydro power station was built on a tributary of Sutlej River supplied power to Shimla. When the electricity arrived, the Railway Station, Viceroy’s offices, hospitals, other government offices, were electrified and then private British residences were electrified. Bazaars, people's homes and street lights came last. My own home in Shimla was electrified in 1948. When the wiring was done it was done to provide lighting only on the 220 volt grid. Heating was last in the minds of city planners. The wiring in the offices and homes was never built to withstand higher heating or other appliance load. This discipline to limit heating elements was strictly enforced by the British. This whole discipline collapsed and the night watchmen started to stay warm with the use of electric heaters. This is one reason why all the fires started at night. Coal/Kerosene, the original heating mediums were dumped in favor of electric heaters. The net result was the overloaded wiring. This probably was the prime reason of fires which most often started at night. Other causes such as smoking, letting a medium of fire burn indiscriminately, arson, lightening, etc. could be the other causes. No matter what the cause, a valuable heritage building gets gutted, it is a major national loss.

After this large fire and no remedial measures put in place for other heritage buildings, Shimla heritage began to suffer bigger and bigger losses as one fire after another, wrecked large and beautiful buildings. The restoration required enormous sums of money and also the skills base necessary to repair and restore was inadequate. The majority of restorations were/are of lower than normal quality. The Himachal Dham building has been replaced by a completely different architectural structure. It does not house government offices, but it is now the premises of Akashvani. We of the forties generations, always miss the previously built buildings. The new ones are seldom suitable for the lush landscape.

Here is the list below of buildings which have suffered serious fire damage:

Walker Hospital 

Peterhoff

Snowden Hospital

Grand Hotel

  Gorton Castle

GPO

Western Command (a portion)

Minto Court

Schools burnt down include BCS and Harcourt Butler and many more buildings

My concern is that until we tighten discipline, have an effective interior fire fighting system, spend more money on building upkeep and probably redo the old building wiring, we are going to hear more about these mishaps....... Cheers