Our national heritage – like that of any nation – is priceless yet many Fijians seem to have been indifferent to just how much we lost when an important part of our history went up in smoke with the fire that consumed the 109-year old Defence Club in Suva a week ago. There was the odd media reference to the destruction of the historical relics that were housed in the club but public interest lasted about as long as it took for the final embers to be extinguished.
Buried in the features section of the Fiji Times at the weekend was a republished article from two years ago that tells us how much we lost as a nation. I urge everyone to read it to take in the scale of what has vanished. Yet even more important is the need for a public debate to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Also buried in the paper was a story that ought to cause a great deal of alarm not only to aficionados of history but anyone living in Suva. Because according to the CEO of the National Fire Authority, Puamau Sowane, firefighters were hampered in tackling the blaze because of the lack of water pressure in the fire hydrants on Gordon Street. This clearly should have been front page news and led every bulletin in Fiji. Because the ramifications are truly frightening.
If the National Fire Authority didn’t have what it needed to fight a fire in a low rise building because the infrastructure is deficient, imagine what would happened if a blaze consumed a multi-storey building in the capital. Just up the road from Gordon Street when it becomes McGregor Road is the 28-story WG Friendship Plaza. Perhaps it is just as well that it is unfinished. Because if the water pressure in the hydrants in Gordon Street wasn’t enough to fight the Defence Club blaze, imagine what would happen if a blaze broke out in the Friendship Tower? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
The government needs to make an absolute priority of reviewing the ability of the National Fire Authority to do its job. The failure of the hydrants in Gordon Street is a national wake-up call that must not be ignored. The lives of a great many Fijians are at stake. And we must do everything possible as a nation to avert the prospect of the appalling death and destruction that would accompany a high rise fire that couldn’t be fought because the taps are running dry. Forget about the possibility of one towering inferno. Much of the city could go up if such a blaze couldn’t be contained.
We also need an urgent review of the fire threat to other buildings in Suva housing our national heritage. The National Archives are an immediate priority and so is the Fiji Museum. How resistant are they to the possibility of a blaze that would punch an even bigger hole in our national heritage than the Defence Club inferno? It’s easy to forget about these things when there are so many other pressing political and social concerns. But that is the lesson of what happened last week – just how easy it is for the nation to lose something as precious as our history. And we must act now to prevent that from ever happening again.
Defence club had less than 500 members and was not doing financially too well. Most days I found 10 to 20 patrons there.It is strange staff started at 7.30 that day when fire started. I have a feeling a high rise building will replace it now with the insurance payout.
Tony, it is the loss of what was in the club that is the issue here. I am more concerned now to make sure that the National Archives and the Fiji Museum are secure. And, of course, we must have adequate infrastructure to fight these blazes. In the case of the Defence Club, we clearly did not and that is very worrying.
Basically unless you are living on Denarau or a 5-6 star resort, water pressure is non existent anywhere (or jump in the river). Trust me-the fire authorities have been advised from experts abroad. Additionally Fiji Water Authority has had and continues to have advice but ho hum. They do not listen. They are quite happy to pay expat consultants a lot of money to repeat the same information over and over. It falls on deaf ears. Infuriating. Fiji Museum is at risk. Many colonial homes house precious artefacts and are at risk. Suva itself is a tragic firestorm waiting to happen. We all know there is money in Fiji rather spent on material possessions than life saving essentials. CWM is a disaster. Nadi Hospital is a disaster. We could go on. The “authorities” don’t listen and the non Fijian consultants continue to fly in out repeatedly (it’s been years) being paid for saying the same things over and over to deaf ears. Sickening.
The powers that be sent to build a 10 storey extension to a certain hotel at Denarau but Nadi’s water pressure is worse than Suva. To pump water up to the upper floors of that monstrosity will suck water out of the mains and deprive all of Nadi of the life giving fluid.
More than that, Nadi lacks a proper sewage system. The current pipeline running from Votua Levu to the treatment plant at Navakai and from there to it’s discharge point in Nadi River upstream of Denarau has permanent leaks all along the way.
The fire at the Defence Club should be a wake up call for municipal authorities, national govt and the private sector.
So much history lost! And yes, imagine the tower going up in flames! The club is forever embedded in my memory, and not because I was a member. In 1969 I was in Suva for the centenary celebrations of the Fiji Times at the invitation of Robby Robson as my g-g-grandfather GL Griffiths founded the paper and ran it for 40 years. Robby took me to the Defence Club and offered me the opportunity to join the Fiji Times staff and be trained under Len Usher. It never came to be. I was 23, living in Sydney, engaged, and my now wife refused to consider moving to Fiji, even after Robby and Judy Tudor made a strong case for the opportunity over lunch at the American Club in Macquarie St Sydney! The journey of life!
The Suva Defence Club, GPH and the Fiji Times may be the last vestiges of British colonialism in Fiji but more was lost in the fire at the Defence Club than the building, artefacts and stories of the past.
When the British finally responded to the request of the chiefs to make Fiji into a crown colony they came with their own unique brand of colonialism: an independent merit-based bureaucracy, schools and medical facilities, sports fields, a representative parliamentary system and an independent judiciary, system based on three tiers. Common law that serves as the basis for our Bill of Rights in successive constitutions, a second layer of institutions and an all important third layer of review. In Britain they have the House of Lords, in Fiji the Senate in 1970 Constitution negotiated from the British was the machinery for political review and the Privy Council was the third tier for legal reviews.
Rabuka’s 1987 review, backed by the Great Council of Chiefs who made him a life member, severed the umbilical chord attachment with the British system. The Senate was abolished with no third tier body for review, the privy Council was replaced by a high Court.
Rabuka Mark II, under this Coslition Govt, has ignored Constitutional provisions related to appointments to the judiciary, the DPP and arguably the GCC. He and his AG are hard pressed to do away with the Constitution and replace it with one that cements Fijian hegemony, The AG is hell bent on filling the judiciary with itaukei and the “Chiefs-for-all” rage given to the reconstituted GCC is in reality bestowing the review function which in the British system lies with an upper house representing the people, Rabuka and his Coalition govt is setting up the GCC as a syncretic replacement. With its independent source of funding from the itaukei Trust Fund Rabuka has snipped the chord of public accountability on this new instrument of review.
Rabuka’s vision is widely different from that of Rt Seru Cakobau’s in ceding Fiji to Gt Britain. It is different from the pro grass roots ideologies of Navosavakadua, founder of the Tuka Cult, and different from Apolosi Ranawai of the Viti Kabani. Rabuka’s ideology is pro chiefs and pro itaukei political elite, who come mainly from eastern Fiji.
So the burning of the Defence Club is the symbolic slaying of Julius Ceasur by Brutus, a complete break from Fiji’s British colonial past and entry to a new and u. Retain future whose outcomes will depend on whatever populist leader able to capture the minds of the itaukei majority.
The parliament building has been a personal curiosity a long time. Who does it belong to and why did Mara bother to waste millions of dollars to build the new parliament house in Nasese but ended up being burnt down by a mosquito coil.
If anything to fret about is the digital information in the hands of foreign tech companies that store historic information of the land in Fiji.
Speaking of landmark buildings…the Garrick Hotel will probably outlast each victorian building left standing today.
Was it the Parliament House in nasese that burned down or the GCC complex at the seawall?
How did the fire start, thats the question in everyones mind now. Was it an electric fault or arson?
It has now been establised it was arson. Just heard this news today