A summer without tragedy

The report of not one but two fires in Bahrain, in our newspaper pages, signals a brutal aspect of the summer months in Bahrain. Although the fire in a residential building in Nuwaidrat and another in an Arad farm were luckily without casualties (except for smoke damage of property), this is an early warning for us.

Summertime is when we ramp up our use of electrical conveniences like air-conditioners and in many homes, we service these appliances but not the wiring that carries the power to run them. Faulty wiring and untended gas fires in the kitchen are the biggest contributors to these accidents.

Bahrain has a strong framework in place for inspecting buildings where landlords sublet the apartments as worker accommodation and the inspections have contributed greatly to reducing unsafe conditions of over-crowding and inadequate sanitation, ventilation and faulty electrical lines, all of which can jeopardize lives in a crisis.

Now the other summer peril is accidents – often fatal – in swimming pools. In most high-rise residences and villas, there are swimming pools untended by safety measures. I often wonder at the irony: in many offices, each worker has a code to be punched in order to access the internet or even the photocopier. This is so the usage can be tracked and workers who utilise these facilities for personal use can be warned. When we are so careful about the internet and photocopier, why are we not more vigilant about the use of swimming pools by people who often don’t know the basics of surviving in beyond three feet of water?

You have a receptionist in most apartment blocks to monitor access – why not a lifeguard or at least a motion-sensor camera to check for potential accidents in the pool? There is so much talk about AI and how it will save lives. Here is a first place to try that theory out – have an AI-enabled poolside camera that will analyse image feeds and raise the alarm when the movements look like it is a person in distress.

Let us all push the boundaries of summertime safety together so that we can enjoy our sunny Bahrain weather without unnecessary tragedies.

 (Captain Mahmood Al Mahmood is the Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Tribune and the President of the Arab-African Unity Organisation for Relief, Human Rights and Counterterrorism)