The Great Fire of Karachi

 Words could never be enough to summarize the incident of such magnitude. An ever-worst national tragedy may it be called in which the ruthless fire caged, tortured and brutally killed a large number of working class of the metropolitan city. In a building entirely packed, where exit gates were locked, fire extinguishers were missing - for al least one and half hour as claimed by owner of Ali Enterprises, Arshad Bhaila - and had no way for the air to pass, how anyone could have found a way out of the burning hell. The result was a wait for the absolution of the destiny, the destiny which unfortunately had some other plans. Thus the deleterious wait ended up in mourns and anguish for dozens of unfortunate families. 

But the question lingers around is that, is it the only ill-fated building in Karachi which does have loops holes? We all know that there are hoards of buildings standing in the metropolis or candidly speaking in all parts of the country, which are not even close to the international standards of construction. These are the time bombs ticking on our heads persistently, but in the end the point is, who cares? Sad enough it takes an episode of this spectrum to be happened to turn few heads.

And as soon as the calamity occurs, the blame game begins with concerned bodies putting the ball in each others court. Government announces three lacs for each head and blames the factory owners for the massacre, the ones who always have their suitcases ready to leave for the airport, surely before the ECL is being sent to all the exit stations. Never too late for the building control authorities as well. Those who give thumbs-up to the constructions of additional floors and allow usage of sub-standard material for constructing buildings which couldn’t even guarantee a year to stand, then why they would even think of implementing house-building laws in the city. Thus, except few burned souls who were trapped in the building, everyone else would very conveniently find an escape gate for himself. 

During this saga, another revelation comes to surface. It was, that in 2003 (The Musharraf era), electrical inspectors were halted from inspecting electrical installation work of building, before issuing licence to the applicant. But the issues arise here is that why nothing has been done about it in so many years? What the labour inspectors’ job is? Why the environmental protection industry doesn’t make a concrete step to ensure that law for fire prevention are followed by all? Why the fire exits of such huge structures are being permanently sealed? And why local bodies like SITE ltd (Sindh Industrial Trading Estates) and civil defence authorities couldn’t play any role in preventing such disastrous incidents to be happened? So on and so forth. Hence, again we are left clueless who to put the blame on.

As per revolutionary-customary practice of suo-moto actions had been taken by the courts, investigation committees have been formed by the government; inquiries, hearing, notices, arrests, and bails, the tango would go on for sometime. Eventually, the file would be thrown into the piles of other brittle paperwork stored in any of the government’s data preservation centre. Alas! The crying faces of the ones who lost lives of their bread earners, could do nothing more than plunging TRPs of the news channels.

Is there any hope? That’s what we usually ask and see each others face to find the answer but the only silver lining is the one that lies inside us. We should change our own nature to bring up the change; the stubbornness inside us that evoke us to break rules and put other’s life on stake. That could begin by accepting our mistakes, our failures, and our wrong doings. It’s not cruel to commit a mistake; cruelty is to be obstinate about it. Lives of those who were left helpless in that factory couldn’t be restored. But we can make an effort to save the ones that are left.

Rules are made to be followed - but are seemed - meant to be broken in our dear homeland. Blaming the government is always a convenient option, but if we ask ourselves that do we make cautious efforts in our daily routine life to ensure safety of others, the answer would mostly be “No”. Living responsibly is the only way of living. Life is important; we should begin to give respect to it otherwise from where and when this fire would catch us no body knows!