Fire: Two houses gutted

MANSEHRA: Two houses were destroyed by a fire in Sarwai Talhata village on Saturday night. Police and eyewitnesses said Abdul Rasheed’s family had gone to sleep with a wood fire burning to warm the room. In the middle of the night, the kitchen caught fire, which quickly spread through Rasheed’s two-room house and his brother’s neighbouring house. The villagers tried to put out the inferno by dousing the flames with water, but the two houses were reduced to ash in an hour. The village lacks a proper firefighting system. Four goats and two buffaloes were killed in the fire. Valuables worth hundreds of thousands of rupees were also destroyed, the families told police. Both men work in Karachi and were not home when the fire happened.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 5^th, 2012.