Blaze razes hopes of hundreds into haze

Damage could have been controlled had the fire brigade responded on time, say shop owners.

KARACHI: Shahid was happy with his life as a labourer. He had recently rented a house for his small family. He was proud of buying a television set, a refrigerator and some furnishings to make the place a home. But the timber market blaze took all that away in front of his very eyes.

Shahid is a resident of Jharoo Wali Gali in Gazderabad - one of the several hundred who were rendered homeless overnight after a fire erupted at the timber market. A walk through the street on Sunday morning bespoke the catastrophe that had struck a night earlier, taking in its wake the homes of several hundred families.

The residents sat outside what remained of their homes - crying helplessly while consoling each other with whatever courage they could muster. Maybe it was meant to be, some said. At least no one was hurt, said others. Yet others braved the still-hot embers to retrieve what little they could from the houses.



"I had rented this house three years ago. The fire took away everything I had procured after saving up for years," said Shahid in a shaky voice. A few steps ahead of him, Shahid's wife clad in a burqa was trying to console her daughter with false promises of returning home soon. "We have been out on the street since yesterday night without food or water," she said. "There is nothing left for us."

The narrow street, adjacent to the timber market, has around one hundred houses, most of them multi-storey, which were inhabited by around two to three hundred families. The fire wreaked havoc on all the houses - most of them were damaged beyond recognition.

"This is a lower-middle class neighborhood, inhabited since the time of partition," said a resident, Amir, standing outside a partially burnt house, with a slab boasting its construction in 1978. "We built these houses through years of struggle. It is still unbelievable that this tragedy has struck us."

The street had a thick of muck courtesy of the water from the fire brigades as people frantically ran around, looking for someone or something that had gone missing. A young boy desperately scoured the street, his eyes wide with fear as he looked for a loved one. A friend's father-in-law used to live in the street. As soon as he found who he was looking for, he handed him his mobile phone, asking him to talk to his daughter and son-in-law who were out of the city. The man, who appeared to be in his 50s, burst into tears as soon as he uttered the usual words of salutation. The timber market is surrounded by an unplanned neighborhood of haphazard, narrow streets. On account of eyewitnesses, one of the reasons why the fire caused so much destruction was that the fire extinguishers could not enter the streets.

Next to the Jharoo Wali Gali is Soomra Gali where a main gate opens into the market. Almost all the shopkeepers had congregated at this point. They helplessly looked on as their sources of livelihood perished before their very eyes. "If the fire extinguishers had arrived on time and had adequate water, this fire could have been controlled," said a shopkeeper, Abdul Qadir, who had been running his shop since the past 40 years. "This is not just our loss. Hundreds of daily-wage labourers have also lost their source of livelihood."

According to a member of the market's association, Yusuf Kalar, the fire has caused a loss of approximately Rs3 billion. "We will build our businesses again" he said. "But the government should also play its role and compensate the affectees.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 29^th, 2014.