First siren of the fire engine made me run out to find where the fire was. Thick curl of smoke from Wangdue Dzong stunned me. I quickly made a tweet and ran to my car. I made myself believe that the fire is not in the Dzong.
By the time I reached the Dzong, half of it was already consumed. There were thousands of helpless people around, many crying and praying. As I watched our history burn, I constantly lost my senses; I was often thinking of it as a dream, and then I return to my sense. I could feel the heat from the fire and million voices. I felt sorry, felt helpless and felt useless.
There were people running with buckets and running without anything, everybody wanted to save their history but even the fire engines’ best efforts couldn’t help.
The fire began from the northern tower and by the time people are mobilized the entrance to the Dzong was blocked by debris and flame. Just when we thought our firefighter could penetrate the entrance then the fire spread to the central tower.
There were hundreds of people around the Dzong and in their emotional effort to make difference they exposed themselves to falling stones, and debris. From where I was watching i could see a group of people right under the roof which was about to fall, but they weren’t aware because from where hey were they couldn’t see the fire, I whistled and shout at them to move out. They couldn’t hear me. So I made the whole group of people around me to shout and signal with hand together to move them out. It worked. Some moments later the whole roof collapsed. They made it out on time.
Until this moment we were very hopeful that a divine intervention would save the Utse of the Dzong, and for quite some time the wind was pushing away the fire into opposite direction. I even spotted some monks and people on the rooftop near the Utse, seemingly not trapped but trying to evacuate important nangtengs from the passage that runs through the toilet. Divine intervention was the only hope since there was no way anybody can carry a bucket of water through the burning entrance.
Even god seemed helpless, Utse of the Dzong soon blazed and we all shouted, we cried and cursed god and we lost hope. Thats when I made the most heartbreaking tweet: We lost Wangdue Dzong. Even God couldn’t help!
Just this morning I was looking at a very old photograph of Wangdue Dzong with the ancient bridge intact, perhaps taken in 1950s, and now I am feeling very sorry. We just lost the Dzong that stood there for nearly 400 years…
Courtesy : http://www.passudiary.com/
