KARACHI: On a footpath on the road adjacent to the three collapsed buildings in Rizvia Society on Thursday sat Abdul Rasheed and his extended family. An elderly woman in a black abaya was being helped and urged to sip water while she wept uncontrollably, begging all those around her to go and find the children. A man was telling her all would be well, that God willing the family would have survived and they would soon hear something positive from the rescuers.

Abdul Rasheed later told Dawn that he was at work in Keamari when he received a call from a neighbour a little after 11.30am to say that their building had collapsed and his family was trapped under the rubble. “I called my brother, who informed the rest of the family as I rushed here. They have found my six-year-old daughter Alina, who was rushed to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital. One of my brothers is there and he says she has a fracture in her foot. The rest of my family — my wife, my 14-year-old daughter Sarah, 12-year-old Hira and two-year-old son Abdul Rauf — are still trapped under the rubble. Our flat in the six-storey building was on the fourth floor,” he said.

“They are pulling out people, some dead, some alive. My other brother Abdul Bari is near where the rescuers are at work and he says he just saw a hand, which he thinks might be my wife’s, and he saw it move. Please pray, please pray my family is safe,” he said.

Suddenly he saw another female relative coming towards him with tears in her eyes. He ran to her with crazed eyes and screamed at her to tell him what happened. Had she seen or heard something he had not. The poor woman quickly wiped the tears away and quickly calmed him down repeating again and again that she knew nothing more than what he knew. She was just crying because she was frustrated and wanted to see their family safe and sound as he did.

‘It is common practice in this area to bribe officials to look the other way even if they know of this kind of illegal construction’

The three buildings looked like a collapsed house of cards, one overlapping over the other with the first two buried in the ground. There were frustrated onlookers who wanted to know why the rescuers were digging out the rubble with small spades. It was explained to them that big machines may injure the people trapped underneath.

Waqas Ahmed, who was there with his uncle, said that his aunt Dr Ghazala Shahid was a homeopath, who was just wrapping up and about to leave when the tragedy happened. “We were on our way to pick her up ... we didn’t expect this. Now we are praying for her life,” said the boy, who added that there were several patients waiting in the clinic’s waiting area who are also trapped inside the collapsed building.

Khatoon was there praying for her sister Dr Khairun. “I tried calling my sister, who also works at the homeopathic clinic, located in the basement of the second building. The phone was ringing, but I couldn’t hear the bell anymore. Her phone is off now. My other sister Dr Zaitoon also works with her, but she was home today. We lost our father very early, and I brought up my two younger sisters like my daughter. I can’t lose Khairun,” she said with a lump forming in her throat.

Another young man said that there is a woman who is in the vegetable produce business who also lives in the first building. “When her relatives called her, she answered her phone and said that she was in a very dark place. But later her phone went dead. Her relatives have tried calling her several times but it is no use,” he said.

Sattar, another resident of one of the three buildings, said that his brothers Farrukh and Khurram with mother Akhtar Bibi were trapped inside. “My wife and myself were out for grocery. And my mother and two brothers were at home,” he said before clashing with the police for not allowing him to go near the collapsed buildings.

The place was buzzing with police, army and Rangers personnel, all helping in search and rescue with the other first responders. “We are trying to explain to the people to stay away and let the experts do their job, but they refuse to understand. Yes, we get the frustration of the relatives of the people trapped but there are also so many people here who are just onlookers,” said a police constable.

Syed Nasir Ali, a resident of the area, said that there had been no power supply in the area for two hours. And then when electricity was restored, they heard a loud explosion. “We thought that the area PMT had exploded. But when we came running outside this scene awaited us,” he said gesturing to the collapsed buildings.

“It is a sad state of affairs. You see five to six storey high buildings on plots as small as 40 or 70 square yards. The building which fell first on to its neighbouring building making it fall on the building next to it was initially only a single-storey building built on 70 square yards. It was built some 15 years ago. Then its owner started adding more floors to it even though its foundation was not designed to take this much load. It is common practice in this area to bribe officials in the Sindh Building Control Authority to look the other way even if they know of this kind of illegal construction,” he said.

Another resident of the area, 12-year-old Azaan Najam, said that he had come to his school which is closed due to the coronavirus scare to get some books. “I live two streets away and many of my friends are still buried in the rubble. We are all home because our schools are closed,” he said.

Suddenly there were whistles and volunteers rushing on to the road yelling at the people gathered there to clear the road for the ambulances to pass. There were children in a couple of ambulances, then one saw a body covered with a sheet in another. Abdul Rasheed ran to the road from the footpath to see if they had his family members. Someone told him that one ambulance had an injured two-year-old boy and a teenage girl and he looked hopeful. Then he was told that the dead body in the other ambulance was that of a woman, which was enough to make him lose consciousness. The people around him caught his limp body as he collapsed.

The rescue work picked up speed as dusk approached. The rescuers wanted to find as many people as they could while they had light. The search and rescue work continued till late into the evening.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2020