KARACHI: Amid ambulance sirens wailing, firefighters frenetically trying to douse flames and evacuating people from the ill-fated multi-storey RJ Mall building with the help of two snorkels and half a dozen fire brigade vehicles, and surrounded by law-enforcers and a crowd of sympathetic onlookers, Tajuddin cried helplessly as he sat on the crib and waited with bated breath for some news of his son Bilal.

“We have looked for Bilal everywhere, in all the hospitals. Even firemen have almost completed their search but there is no sign of his. We are not sure if he is still trapped inside or managed to escape and end up in some hospital,” said Bilal’s brother Kamran hoping against the hope for the safety of his loved one.

A resident of Korangi, 24-year-old Bilal worked as a manager in a coffee shop on the fourth floor of the RJ Mall situated on Dalmia Road, off Rashid Minhas Road, which caught fire early in the morning on Saturday.

“Bilal called home at around 6:30am and said in a nervous tone ‘a fire has broken out in the building and I’m stuck up inside. Just pray for me. This was the last we heard of him. Since then, we have been calling him and the phone keeps ringing but he doesn’t pick it,” Tajuddin burst into tears.

Just when he was talking to media persons and praying for safe recovery of his son, two firemen carrying a stretcher made their way through the crowd towards ambulances. Bilal’s family ran towards it only get the shock of their lives. It was him. The search for their missing loved one was over but it was not how the family had wanted it to end.

Firefighters retrieve four of 11 bodies from building’s glass lift

The sister of the unlucky young man started screaming and weeping loudly as she saw her brother’s dead body, which moved everyone around her, even the strangers in the crowd, to tears.

Bilal’s was the last body recovered from the building and afterwards the fire department officials announced that their search operation, which lasted for at least five hours, was over and now cooling process was under way.

Firefighter Aneeq-ur-Rehman, who was engaged in the operation from the beginning till the end, said: “We received the call at around 6am and ran to the spot. When we walked into the building, it was completely dark all around since the fire had disconnected power line. Besides, thick clouds of smoke inside the building made the rescue work doubly difficult.”

He made a startling revelation that most of the people present inside did not die because of the fire but due to suffocation. “There was no room for smoke to go out. We went to the roof first with the help of snorkel and broke open ducts which let the smoke out. Then we could begin firefighting operation and rescued some 20-25 people,” he said.

He said that four of the bodies were taken out from a glass lift. “Four people had got into the lift in their bid to escape but it stopped halfway after the fire burnt down power lines. They could not even break down the glass to get out of the lift as it didn’t have any equipment to smash it, which is a basic emergency safeguard. The smoke suffocated them to death. Had there been any hammer in the lift, they could have saved their lives,” he continued.

He said that there was a call centre and a software house in the building where the fire most probably broke out and then spread to five floors.

People in the crowd, who were mostly from the neighbourhood, raised serious questions over the emergency safeguard measures in the building.

When Karachi Commissioner Salim Rajput visited the ill-fated mall and talked to the media afterwards he was bombarded with questions about the role of the Sindh Building Control Authority and other departments concerned in the prevention of such incidents. He was also asked as to who the culprit was in this tragedy, which had claimed 11 precious lives.

The commissioner evaded most of the questions and only replied an inquiry had been ordered and legal action would be taken against the people found responsible for the incident before he left.

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2023