Opinion When the shrine burned

One photo from Srinagar,by Associated Press’ Dar Yasin,was particularly arresting: among the people clamouring in the ruins,a man stood balanced on a railing,knees bent,fist raised and mouth open in a shriek that recalled Edvard Munch’s painting,“The Scream”. His scream symbolised the fact that heritage structures are important to more than just an elite corps of conservationists and historians.

However,in a rapidly modernising world,it sometimes takes a tragedy like this to bring to public consciousness the importance of heritage structures. As I first witnessed in 1981,Srinagar was more than just the fabled Dal Lake. Its narrow streets and closely built,leaning buildings captured my deepest interest — eventually leading me to research the origins of their unique timber-laced masonry. When I moved to earthquake-prone California,it was the resistance of those Srinagar houses to temblors that became an inspiration for a research project that has,over 25 years,taken me around the world,and back to Kashmir following the 2005 earthquake. After that earthquake,the residents saw the resilience of traditional timber-laced houses even in the area near the epicentre of the quake in Pakistan,and built approximately 2,50,000 new houses using the traditional Kashmiri construction in place of their collapsed houses made of rubble stone and concrete.

The Dastgeer shrine fire has stripped the stucco off its masonry walls,revealing timber lacing even within its brick walls as well as heavy timber internal framing. Thus,this heritage building shared the kind of technology that makes most of the older buildings of Srinagar so remarkable and potentially influential on new construction,as well as worthy of preservation. Although charred,the heavy timber frame is still sound. In modern building codes,heavy timber has a better fire rating than unprotected steel,which would have collapsed completely. An internal reinforced concrete frame would have been damaged beyond repair by the expansion of the internal steel. Here the masonry walls and some parts of the surviving timber frame stand as an armature for the shrine’s future restoration — giving pause to those who may advocate that a reconstruction should not be a renewal of the traditions that are embodied in its 19th century form.

Such insights offer small consolation when one confronts the loss of the interior artistic finishes. Fires are indeed more frequent than earthquakes and leave little of value behind. Hopefully,the destruction of the two great Himalayan heritage monuments in India and Bhutan will stimulate national and international efforts to prevent fires and to reduce their rapid spread from one segment of a structure to another. In Srinagar,the volume and force of water cannons appears to have been woefully inadequate,and there were no fire tenders with extension ladders to allow hoses to be aimed inside the building and onto the burning roof. INTACH’s J&K convenor,Saleem Beg,has also observed that foam-based fire-extinguishers would have been far more effective than water in extinguishing the fire that spread across the oil-stained wood of the Dastgeer Sahib shrine.

In addition to the conspicuous need for on-site fire extinguishers and standpipes,there should be other effective,prevention efforts. Earlier,roofs were covered with soil in Kashmir; now almost all of them are clad with galvanised,corrugated steel sheets. Soil-covered roofs can possibly slow the opening of holes in the roof,while sheet metal quickly comes off,allowing the flames to rise high on the oxygen drawn up through the structure. Since soil-covered roofs are unlikely to be reinstated,other measures are necessary. The fires in Bhutan and Kashmir spread rapidly through interlocking roof structures which did not have any firewalls. The absence of masonry or traditional plaster firewalls in both complexes is what is most surprising,as firewalls are an old and well-proven technology in slowing the spread of fire.

The specifics here are not comprehensive,but serve to emphasise the need for a coordinated approach for improvements in both fire-fighting and fire protection. It is encouraging that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has directed that the restoration of the shrine “be strictly based on its heritage characteristic”. But,ultimately,Srinagar as a historic city can only be saved if its residents come to understand the importance of all of its heritage structures,not just great monuments. It is necessary to understand the historical context in which a monument like the Dastgeer Sahib shrine exists,even when it is rebuilt. By good fortune and planning,INTACH J&K has extensively documented the now destroyed shrine with measured drawings and photographs.

Hopefully,the re-emergence of craft traditions that will be necessary to rebuild the shrine in the traditional way can lead to a renewed respect throughout Srinagar for traditional buildings,and a movement away from the identification of reinforced concrete construction as the requirement to be “modern”. That would indeed offer a kind of salvation from such a horrible loss.

Langenbach,emeritus professor of architecture and building conservation at University of California,Berkeley,is the author of ‘Don’t Tear It Down! Preserving the Earthquake Resistant Vernacular Architecture of Kashmir’