KARACHI, Aug 3: At least nine people were killed in rain-related incidents in the city on Saturday, when the meteorological department recorded up to 126 millimetres (almost five inches) of rain that piled misery on the citizens and prompted the local government minister to suspend the metropolis’s municipal services chief for his failure to meet the challenge.

The department forecast more downpour for the next 24 hours.

Most of those killed were electrocuted or had drowned.

Traffic remained clogged for hours at many places. Residents of low-lying areas particularly suffered. A few of them told Dawn that water had entered their homes and was ruining their household appliances and furniture.

Areas inundated by the rain included portions of arteries such as Sharea Faisal, I. I. Chundrigar Road, M. A. Jinnah Road, Korangi Road, Shaheed-i-Millat Expressway, Karimabad Road, Jehangir Road, Shahrah-i-Pakistan, Shahrah-i-Noorjahan Gharibabad, Banaras, part of Nazimabad, Korangi and a few areas in Bin Qasim Town.

The city life, which was paralysed soon after the downpour began, pushed the authorities to move against the officials concerned.

“The Sindh chief minister has removed KMC administrator Hashim Raza Zaidi on my recommendation,” Sindh local bodies minister Owais Muzaffar told Dawn. “Incompetence is the major reason and definitely he has failed to manage the city on the first rain of the season. We are trying our best to keep the rain-related system intact and wherever human error is found in maintaining this, the officials concerned would be punished.”

A spokesman for his ministry said Mr Muzaffar also suspended municipal services director Masood Alam and executive engineer of Jamshed Town Chaudhry Shahid for the same reasons.

Rescue service of a charity and hospital sources counted a total of nine deaths in rain-related incidents. Most of the victims were children.

Two men died from electrocution in Surjani Town. An official at the Chhipa Welfare Association said the victims – 40-year-old Basharat Masih and 25-year-old Danish Masih – were found dead in Saif-ul-Mari Goth and their bodies were shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.

A 14-year-old boy was electrocuted in Korangi 2½ and a five-year-old boy in Paposh Nagar near Bhayani Heights. The identity of both victims could not be ascertained immediately. A teenage boy in Street 19 of DHA Phase-1 also died form electrocution.

At least three bodies were found by rescue workers in different storm drains and a river. The dead they said might have drowned during the heavy rains.

The body of an eight-year-old boy was found in a sewage drain in Shadman Town No 1 barely an hour before the body of an eight-year-old boy was recovered from a storm drain near the Metro cinema in Orangi Town. The body of a woman was also retrieved by rescue workers from another drain in Orangi Town near the Fouji hotel.

The downpour also caused exhausting traffic jams in almost every part of the city leading to a great deal of hardship for those who were stuck inside the private and public transport on the inundated streets.

The quantum of private and public vehicles was otherwise low on Saturday as most of the private and multinational concerns and financial institutions remained closed. Still the light shower was enough to cause massive snarls-up in many parts of the city owing to water accumulation and absence of traffic police and municipal workers.

“Thanks God, schools and colleges are closed,” said a woman waiting for a passenger bus to get back to her Machhar Colony home from Clifton where she worked as a housemaid.

Bumper-to-bumper traffic moved at a snail’s pace for miles as thousands of vehicles remained stuck at all major intersections.

In many localities, people placed bricks and stones on the submerged streets and lanes to keep them away from the filth and mud. Women and children faced great difficulty in toddling over these makeshift crossings.

Streets in parts of the Defence Housing Authority and Clifton were also inundated, exposing tall claims of the DHA and the Clifton Cantonment Board.

“This city has received much more rains in the past, but it never witnessed such a horrible situation with so light rains,” a woman professor of a private university said.

The pedestrians also faced monsoon woes as the passing vehicles splattered their clothes with filthy water. Hurling of expletives on the motorists was a common scene in parts of the city as they didn’t care for the pedestrians and motorcyclists.

Power outages

Residents from Clifton to Malir complained of extended power outages attributed to the rain on Saturday. Most of the complaints received at Dawn were from North Karachi, Surjani Town, Garden, Saddar and Federal B Area. Some residents called when power was finally restored after hours but something else went wrong. A resident of Federal B Area Block 20 said one phase had not been working since Sehri. “We understand that power outages are to be expected in rain. But we realised what was wrong with the phase when we noticed the broken wire from a pole near our place. It could be dangerous for pedestrians. We have been complaining to the Karachi Electric Supply Company ever since but they haven’t responded as yet,” he said.

A resident of Gulshan-i-Iqbal Block 4-A said that they had no power since 10am but then when it was restored at 7pm, there was an explosion in the pole-mounted transformer in their street, which was yet to be fixed.

Meanwhile, a KESC spokesman said that all such complaints should be referred to their 118 number. “Also please try to stay away from broken wires, electricity poles and even your meters during the rain,” the spokesman added.

About the power failures, he said that 103 of the KESC’s 1350 feeders in Karachi tripped due to the rain. “KESC teams are working nonstop to bring them back on line,” he said. By late evening 57 of them had been normalised.

“As for the extended outages, the KESC has deliberately disconnected some areas for safety reasons,” the spokesman said.

“These include the distribution systems in the kunda-infested areas as there are more fears of electrocutions there,” he said.

“Our teams are out doing repair work and responding to complaints but the water on streets is slowing them down.”

Rainfall and forecast

The maximum rainfall was recorded at 126 millimeters and that was in North Karachi. The rainfall at Karachi airport was 35mm, a Met official told Dawn.

He said the rainfall received at PAF Faisal base was 48mm, at Gulistan-i-Jauhar 55mm, PAF Masroor base 62mm, North Nazimabad 57mm, Gulshan-i-Hadeed 68 and Landhi 59.

He said the maximum temperature in the city fell to 31 degrees centigrade from Friday’s 34.

The officials said rains were expected to continue to lash the city for the next 24 hours.According to Met office, light to moderate rains hit almost every part of the province, except for Mirpurkhas and Pad Eedan where it only drizzled.

It said that 70mm rainfall was recorded in Hyderabad city, 43mm in Thatta, 40mm in Chhore, 72mm in Rohri, 18mm in Nawabshah, 54mm in Sukkur, 45mm in Larkana, 14mm at Moen-jo-Daro and 53mm in Jacobabad.