News
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Karachi weeps as fire zaps 289* Smoke still rising from factory as rescue workers search for more bodies
* 65 workers suffer broken bones after jumping out of windows to save lives
KARACHI: More than 289 people perished in a horrific fire that destroyed a garments factory in Karachi on Tuesday.
Many people had been lining up to collect their paycheques, officials said.
According to reports, 80 bodies were shifted to Civil Hospital, 95 to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital and 71 were sent to Jinnah Hospital.
Irshad, an employee of the gutted factory, said that there were as many as 1,500 workers in the multiple-storey factory when the fire broke at around 6:38pm.
Terming it a third-degree fire, the Fire Brigade officials said the blaze had completely engulfed and damaged the infrastructure of the building.
“People started screaming for their lives,” said Muhammad Asif (20). “Everyone came to the window. I jumped from the third floor.”
“The owners were more concerned with safeguarding the garments in the factory than the workers,” said garment factory employee Muhammad Pervez, holding up a photograph of his cousin, who is also a worker there and is missing.
“If there were no metal grilles on the windows a lot of people would have been saved. The factory was overflowing with garments and fabrics. Whoever complained was fired.”
Senior Superintendent of Police Amir Farooqi told Reuters that police were raiding buildings in different parts of Karachi to search for the factory owners.
Farooqi said 35 people were injured in the garment factory fire and bodies were still being recovered from the facility, which employed about 450 people. The latest death toll in Karachi was 289, said senior police official Fayyaz Leghari.
Smoke was still rising from the factory as rescue workers pulled out charred corpses and covered them in white sheets. Relatives of workers stood in the street awaiting word of their fate. Several wept.
The cause of the garment factory fire was not clear.
“Within two minutes there was fire in the entire factory,” said worker Liaqat Hussain, 29, from his hospital bed where he was being treated for burns all over his body.
“The gate was closed. There was no access to get out, we were trapped inside.”
Successive governments have been unable to provide a reliable power supply so factories have to have their own generators, powered by diesel or petrol, if they want to avoid regular, lengthy power cuts.
A provincial minister ordered an inspection of all factories and industrial plants in Sindh within 48 hours.
Karachi fire chief Ehtesham Salim said rescue workers were facing problems retrieving more bodies from the basement as it was filled with hot water after efforts to extinguish fire.
“There are places in the basement which are still smouldering. Water we used to extinguish the fire has made a pool of hot water in the large area of basement and we are trying to cool it down.”
“There is no electricity in the factory. Our operation has slowed down but we have not suspended our effort.”
Karachi’s top administration official, Roshan Shaikh, told AFP that more victims were being recovered and that he expected the toll to rise. The toll rose rapidly during the day as firefighters extinguished smouldering embers and found dozens of dead huddled together in the basement and ground floor of the factory, where they suspect that the fire began.
“We didn’t find bodies in ones or twos, but in the dozens, which is why the death toll is increasing so alarmingly,” said Salim.
Many of those on the upper floors of the building were rescued or jumped to escape the inferno, although dozens broke limbs on impact with the street.
In Lahore, Tuesday’s fire in a shoe-making factory killed 21 and injuring 14 others, where Tariq Zaman, a government official, blamed a faulty generator.
Nine were laid to rest in Lahore. A large number of people attended the funeral prayers.
In Lahore, a number of illegally operating factories and small industrial units were closed fearing the expected action from district administration after the deadly fire incident. staff report/agencies
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk