Lethal Security Precautions made the Train Bombing Worse

Sixty-seven people were burned alive when a group unknown terrorists planted three firebombs in a Pakistan-bound train. The news of the attack has been splashed across papers around the world not only because the attach was aimed at derailing India-Pakistan peace talks, but because of its freakish reminiscence to dozens of train attacks that have happened in this country since Partition.

The national discussion of the attack has drifted towards catching the people responsible for planting the bombs and a few stories of heroism of quick acting individuals who disarmed a bomb that was about to explode. Pass the Roti has commented on the way this will be used to ignite more sectarian violence. Yet one important detail has been unilaterally overlooked (well except for a great post on Sepia Mutiny). The bombers were only successful because of a goulishly misplaced security precaution where all of the emergency exits on the train were padlocked shut. Apparently the trains go though rough areas and are occasionally held up, so the government thinks it is a better idea to lock every carriage down.

I have seen this happen all over the country. At movie theaters the staff generally padlocks the doors so no one can sneak in or out during the performance, at night my chowkidar locks the building's front gate with a padlock, schools across the the country padlock doors to keep kids inside, and just about every window in the country has bars on it to keep thieves out. The prevailing thought is that it is better to hermetically seal trains, houses, theaters and schools to keep danger out than let people escape in an emergency.

Witnesses said the fire in the other coach was so intense that its occupants could not open the doors. Two victims died beside the tracks. - The Guardian

Lack of emergency exits has caused far more deaths than locking them ever prevented. But let's first take an example or two from my home state. In 1928 in Fall River MA a cloth mill in the center of the city caught fire with hundreds of workers inside. At that time it was standard practice for factory owners to lock worker inside the mill so that no one left work early. However, because the air was thick with lint from the clothing it was only a matter of time before tragedy struck. When a malfunctioning machine ignited the pieces of cloth hundreds of people died and local government forced regulation changes to keep fire exits unlocked.

I worry about the fact that every night my watchman locks our front gate. While the building is made of concrete, and not a big fire risk, if there were an earthquake, second tsunami or a fire in the neighborhood at night no one in the building would have a way to escape without first fiddling with a lock.

And this is exactly what happened in the train bombing. The bombers knew that the people in the carriages would have no way to escape and that a firebomb would definitely kill everyone on board. It was a mistaken security precaution that drove up the death toll, not the ingeniousness of the attack. News reports tell of people pushing against the locked doors and screaming as they burned alive. These were preventable deaths.

And even worse, without any discussion of emergency exits, my guess is that we will read about other tragedies where the death toll climbs because no one can escape the disaster.