Gul Plaza economic toll over Rs100b

On the night of January 17, 2026, a catastrophic third-degree fire engulfed the sprawling Gul Plaza, a multi-storey building on Karachi's MA Jinnah Road. As a result, an area that served as a go-to market for low- and middle-income households was filled with a towering pillar of black smoke.

The blaze, which reportedly began on the ground floor before rapidly engulfing all levels of the complex, has left at least 26 people dead, dozens injured and over 60 missing as of Monday evening.

While authorities officially cite a suspected electrical short circuit as the cause, experts and local industry leaders point to a far more systemic failure.

"In Pakistan, safety is often treated as a financial burden rather than a necessity," said Saad Abdul Wahab, CEO of Grow Safe, a health, safety and environment (HSE) organisation. He described the disaster as a "textbook case" of regulatory failure and cultural apathy toward safety, reflecting a societal attitude that views life-saving measures as "sunk costs" with no tangible return. This culture of neglect was starkly visible at Gul Plaza. Originally approved for 500 shops, the mall eventually housed nearly 1,400 establishments, creating an immense "fire load" of highly combustible imported garments, plastic household goods and carpets.

The scale of overcrowding meant that for a building housing around 7,500 workers and a daily visitor footfall of up to 100,000, basic safety equipment was virtually non-existent.

Wahab described three levels that control or contribute to safety. The first is the failure of proactive "administrative controls" by the government, where regulators prioritise bribery over safety audits, allowing hazardous buildings to operate without oversight. The second is the neglect of "engineering controls" by building owners and unions, who fail to implement both active measures, such as sprinklers and alarms, and passive structural protections, such as fire doors. The third is the breakdown of "emergency response," where insufficient infrastructure and untrained teams arrive too late to save the structure, resulting in a fire that only stops once all combustible material is consumed or the building collapses. Together, these tiers of failure ensure that a manageable flame inevitably transforms into an unstoppable inferno.

The entire 1,400-shop complex relied on only 200 fire balls and 144 fire extinguishers, averaging just one extinguisher for every ten shops, he said.

The inferno has once again exposed the staggering gap between Karachi's needs and its emergency capabilities. Wahab highlighted that for a city of roughly 30 million people, international standards require at least 300 fire stations and 1,200 fire trucks. Currently, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) operates only 28 stations and a mere 15 to 16 active fire trucks.

This deficit has lethal consequences. While international protocols mandate an emergency response within six minutes and 24 seconds, response teams in Karachi often arrive over an hour late due to dilapidated road infrastructure, traffic congestion, obstructed access and logistical delays. "Even when they arrive, a 5,000-gallon truck might only carry 1,500 gallons of water, running dry within five minutes," Wahab explained, describing the city's firefighting efforts as "fighting a forest fire with a garden hose".

The tragedy at Gul Plaza is not merely a failure of equipment but of oversight. The Sindh Occupational Safety and Health (SOSH) Act 2017 was intended to bring such commercial buildings under rigorous safety audits, yet enforcement remains non-existent. Wahab pointed to "systemic corruption" where building stability and safety certificates are issued in exchange for bribes rather than actual compliance.

Critical administrative controls, such as ensuring that 13 out of 16 gates were not locked, as they were at Gul Plaza, failed completely. The lack of a trained Emergency Response Team (ERT) meant that in the critical first 15 minutes of the fire, evacuation was left entirely to the public.

The economic toll is staggering. With over 1,000 shops destroyed, traders face losses estimated at Rs2 to Rs2.5 billion each and around Rs100 billion overall. The human cost is even higher. Among the dead was a young firefighter, Furqan Shaukat, whose recovery from the charred building highlighted the lack of even basic protective gear, such as self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA).

"A major fire can set a business back by 10 years," Wahab warned, noting that while shopkeepers stock around Rs300 million in inventory, they often refuse to spend Rs30,000 on fire blankets or extinguishers.

As the Sindh government declares the fire a "national tragedy" and announces Rs10 million in compensation for victims' families, the underlying issues remain unaddressed. Wahab and other HSE experts are calling for a move away from individual shop-level safety toward integrated, centralised systems for smoke detection, power management and firefighting.

Without immediate structural and regulatory reform, the "third-degree fire" formula, where a blaze only stops when there is nothing left to burn, will continue to haunt Karachi's commercial hubs. The question remains how many more Gul Plazas must burn before the writ of the state is finally enforced to protect the lives and livelihoods of millions.