In one word, there were zero safety measures.” That was the response of a Goa fire department official in the aftermath of the conflagration that killed 25 people on the night of Saturday at Birch by Romeo Lane, a nightclub in the state’s entertainment district. It leads to the question why the place was operating at all, and why the fire department permitted it to remain open in the first place. The department’s director, Nitin Raikar, said “the establishment did not obta