Several people fall unconscious as mercury hits 44°C again

Several people, mostly the elderly, were taken to emergency departments of various public and private hospitals in Karachi on Monday due to heat exhaustion after the temperature in the city soared to 44 degrees Celsius on the second consecutive day during the ongoing heatwave.

Health authorities, however, refuted rumours of deaths due to heatstroke. Humidity dropped to as low as five per cent in the air under the influence of dry winds from the north-westerly direction.

Officials at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, the Civil Hospital Karachi and the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital said that several people were brought to their emergencies and many of them complained of heat exhaustion.

They said the patients were discharged after being provided with the necessary first aid and maintaining their body temperature. No person died or was brought dead at any of the major public hospitals in the city on Sunday or Monday due to heatstroke, according to the health officials.

Karachi an oven

Pakistan Meteorological Department officials said low pressure areas in the Arabian Sea are to blame for the suspension of sea breeze towards Karachi, as warm and dry winds from the north and north-westerly directions turned the city into an oven.

“For the past three days warm and dry winds from Sindh’s plains have turned the weather very hot in the city,” said Karachi Met Office chief Abdur Rashid. “We are expecting this heatwave to continue until Wednesday, when the temperature would remain around 43, 44°C.”

Rashid said the mercury is expected to drop on Thursday, but a change in weather will be visible starting Friday. He said they have already warned of a hot month of Ramazan. More heatwaves may have to be experienced in June due to high temperature in the Arabian Sea and the cutting off of sea breeze under the influence of low pressures areas formed in the sea, he added.

‘No deaths’

The Sindh Health Department categorically denied reports that several people had died due to heatstroke in Karachi during the last couple of days, saying that no person had died due to any heat-related complication in the city during the past three to four days.

“This is a different type of heatwave that we are experiencing these days, in which the temperature increases but the humidity drops, so there are minimal chances of experiencing heatstroke,” said Health Secretary Dr Fazlullah Pechuho.

“On the other hand, due to precautionary measures taken by people as they are more aware this time round, no serious case of heat exhaustion has emerged.”

Dr Pechuho said that no hospital received any heatstroke or heat exhaustion patient in large numbers, adding that all the major public and private hospitals denied receiving any bodies of people who died of heatstroke, and no patient died while being treated for any heat-related complication.  

Power cuts

Announced and unannounced electricity load-shedding continued across the metropolis. Many parts of the city experienced seven to nine hours of power cuts in two to three spells, while the “load-shedding free” areas were also subjected to one to three hours of load management.

Reports of outages by the K-Electric were received from New Karachi, North Karachi, Nazimabad, Liaquatabad, Garden, Lyari, Malir, Landhi and Korangi among several other localities of the metropolis.

Water shortage

In the intensely hot and dry weather, water scarcity added to the miseries of people, as many areas remained without the commodity due to absence of electricity.

Residents of Lyari and Mauripur blocked the main Mauripur road in the wee hours to protest against water shortage for the past several weeks, and demanded that the government provide them with uninterrupted water or resign.

Jamaat-e-Islami leaders, including its city chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman, led the protest against the Sindh government and the Karachi Water & Sewerage Board, saying that depriving people of water in Ramazan was the height of inefficiency, and asked the provincial administration to immediately step down.

Rehman also censured Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar and the Pakistan Peoples Party leadership, saying that despite securing seats from the old city areas for the past several decades, their parties had failed to provide people with the basic necessities of life.

KU postpones exams

Karachi University’s registrar has notified that due to the ongoing heatwave in the city, all examinations from May 22 to 24 have been postponed. With the temperature having soared to 44 degrees Celsius, the examinations have been postponed and new dates will be announced later.

There will be no change in the exams scheduled for May 25 and later. The Board of Intermediate Education Karachi has also postponed examinations from May 21 to 23 due the heatwave in the city. The schedule for these papers will be announced later. However, exams from May 24 will be conducted as per the old timetable.