Flames have licked five souls from existence in an Antwerp apartment block, and already the British fire safety establishment is sharpening its pencils for a truly heroic round of box-ticking. The tragedy is, of course, an absolute horror. But do not weep for the victims just yet. Save your tears for the brave men and women who will now be forced to sit through a PowerPoint presentation entitled 'Lessons Learned: The Antwerp Arson.'
Let us set the scene. A building in central Antwerp. Smoke. Screaming. The terrible crackle of a fire that has decided to pay a visit. By the time the Belgian emergency services had scraped the remains of five residents from the debris, the British Home Office was already on the phone to the National Fire Chiefs Council. The conversation, I imagine, went something like this: 'Hello, yes, we have heard about this business in Belgium. Jolly bad show. We need to run a full review of our own protocols. Just to be sure. Get the chaps in charge of fire extinguisher colour coding and evacuation poster font sizes on a conference call immediately.'
And so the bureaucratic circus begins. The media will run headlines about 'stricter regulations' and 'urgent safety audits.' Politicians will stand at podiums and solemnly promise that 'this must never happen here.' They will convene committees. They will commission reports. They will fret over the precise wattage of emergency lighting. All of this is fabulously, grotesquely pointless, of course. The fire in Antwerp did not occur because of a lack of fire safety protocols. It occurred because buildings burn, people panic, and the universe is indifferent to our petty attempts to legislate against entropy. But never mind that. We must have a review. It is the British way.
Let us compare this to the last major UK fire tragedy: Grenfell Tower. After that inferno consumed 72 people, we had a public inquiry. We had recommendations. We had promises to ban combustible cladding. And what happened? Five years later, hundreds of buildings still wear the same flammable skin. The cladding remains, a silent monument to our collective procrastination. The only thing that has changed is the number of official documents gathering dust on shelves. But here we are again, ready to 'learn lessons' from a fire in Belgium. Mark my words: within a month, some civil servant will produce a 200-page document full of acronyms and bullet points. It will be filed next to the Grenfell report. And the next time a fire kills people, whether in Manchester or Marseille, we will hold another review. It is a comforting ritual, a way to pretend we care, without the inconvenience of doing anything.
The real tragedy is not the fire itself but the fire that burns in the soul of a society that believes bureaucratic process is a substitute for meaningful action. We have elevated 'safety culture' to a religion, complete with rituals, high priests in hi-vis jackets, and holy texts called 'risk assessments.' Yet in our reverence for the form, we have forgotten the function. A fire safety protocol is not a talisman against disaster. It is a piece of paper. It cannot stop a spark. It cannot save a child. Only actual changes to building regulations, enforcement, and funding can do that. But those things cost money and anger construction companies. A review costs nothing but time and printer ink.
So let us go through the motions once more. Let us have our 'urgent review of fire safety protocols in high-rise residential buildings,' as the headline will surely read. Let us see the obligatory photo of a firefighter looking solemn. Let us hear the platitudes. And when the next fire inevitably consumes another building and another family, we will have another review. We can call it the Antwerp Protocol 2.0. The cycle is eternal. The only thing that changes is the name of the city where the bodies are found.
And so, raise a glass of cheap Belgian beer to the dead. And another to the living, who will spend the next six months arguing about the colour of fire doors while the next tragedy brews silently in a wall cavity. This is the state of our nation. Not a land of hope and glory, but a land of reviews, regrets, and relentless inertia. God save the King, and pass the extinguisher."
