Editor,

There is no question that shoddy electrical wiring in many of our buildings is a fire hazard waiting to happen. An inspection of even a small sample of edifices in our country would show that very few of them meet minimum fire safety standards.

And yet the acrid fumes from these recent fire outbreaks that have now reached epidemic proportions smell too much like deliberate arson for us to simply dismiss them as mere accidents.

They in fact perfectly correspond to Ian Fleming’s famous quip in Goldfinger, one of his storied James Bond series: "Once is happenstance. Twice coincidence. Three times is enemy action”.

Mwene Kalinda, Rwanda

Reaction to the story, "Taskforce constituted to investigate fire incidents” (The New Times, July 16)