Three burnt to death in factory fire

Labourers were staying there at night due to heavy workload

KARACHI:

Three labourers were burned to death when a henna factory in a three-storey building caught fire in Orangi Town in the wee hours of Friday.

The deceased were shifted to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for medico-legal formalities after the blaze was partially extinguished by the fire department. Fire-fighters reached the site with three fire tenders but the intensity of the fire had claimed the lives of labourers Akram, his brotherin-law Shahid, and Ismail alias Salman had lost their lives before their arrival.

The labourers reportedly used to stay at the factory at night due to their workload. According to fire officials, the blaze was doused after a three-hour long struggle and the cooling process continued for another hour and a half. A large consignment of henna, chemicals and other goods were completely destroyed in the fire, they said, adding that the chemicals, kept in drums, had also caught fire, which made it difficult for them to extinguish the blaze.

The cause behind the fire could not be ascertained until the filing of this report. However, the fire officials suspect that labourers had either lit a fire or turned on a heater due to the cold weather, which then spread to the chemicals in the factory. The police are investigating the matter further, they said.