Rain stops but hardships continue

Despite the fact that the intensity of rain had weakened on Tuesday and no significant rain was recorded in Karachi on Wednesday, the city is yet to come out of the misery inflicted on it by the downpour on Monday as many of its areas are still inundated and the death toll due to rain-related incidents in the three days has reached 28 after two more deaths due to electrocution.

A 22-year-old youth, Muhammad Buksh, son of Sumar, died of electrocution in Marvi Goth in the Khuldabad area within the limits of the Shah Latif police station. His body was taken to Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) for an autopsy and later handed over to his family.

Police officials said the deceased used to work at a dairy farm in the area where he died after receiving electric shocks.

In the other incident, a 25-year-old man, Siraj, son of Shahabuddin, died of electrocution in the Moinabad area of Landhi within the limits of the Quaidabad police station. His body was taken to the JPMC from where the family took it back without medico-legal formalities.

On Monday and Tuesday, a total of 26 people died in the city in rain-related incidents. Of them, 24, including minors, were electrocuted to death in various parts of the city. The other two rain-related deaths occurred due to a roof collapse in Gulshan-e-Maymar and drowning in Ibrahim Hyderi.

Causeway closed

Karachi Commissioner Iftikhar Shallwani has directed the authorities to keep the Malir River’s causeway closed for traffic until the water level reduces.

He said it would take two to three days more to open the road for public. He was on a visit to different areas of the city to monitor the post-rain situation, and directed the traffic police authorities to bar all kind of traffic movement on the causeway.

Deputy Commissioner Korangi Sheharyar Gull Memon briefed Shallwani that a heavy contingent of police and Rangers had already been deployed in the area to handle any emergency situation.

He also overlooked the city from a helicopter along with Commander Head Quarter Engineers Five Corps, Brigadier Kazi Nasir Mehmood.

KDA grid station

K-Electric (KE) Chairman Ikram Sehgal and Chief Executive Officer Moonis Alvi have thanked the Pakistan Army for its timely assistance in stopping rainwater from entering the KE’s KDA grid station which otherwise could have created a power crisis in the city.

According to a statement issued by the power utility, the threat of rainwater entering the grid station was neutralised due to efforts of the KE’s teams and the Pakistan Army that lasted for several hours.

The KDA grid was fully re-energised at 2pm on Wednesday and power supply to affected areas was normalized, the statement read.

The KE said the Pakistan Army and Rangers worked in tandem with its teams to deal with the threat by building dams, digging trenches and using sandbags to divert the flow of water, and using pumps to clear the grid station.

The Lath Dam near the Super Highway had overflowed after the rain and floodwater entered the grid located in Gulzar-e-Hijri Scheme 33, which is a strategic 220 kilovolt installation serving as the point of connection between the KE and the national grid.

The Pakistan Army and Rangers responded swiftly to the KE’s request for help to avert flooding at the grid station, the statement read.

“When the dam started to overflow Tuesday night and the water entered the KDA grid, as an emergency safety measure, KE was forced to suspend power supply to parts of Sohrab Goth, Abul Hassan Isphahani Road, Super Highway and KWSB’s NEK Pumping station, which have now been normalised. Had water levels continued to rise, the entire grid would have had to be shut down to ensure the safety of people and equipment,” said a spokesperson for the KE.

Hub Dam level up

The water level rose to 310 feet in the Hub Dam due to the monsoon rainfall. The Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) is expecting to have sufficient water for supplying to District West until December 2020. There has been an increase of around 13 feet during the recent rainfall, according to water board MD Asad Ullah Khan. Meanwhile,

3 an official at the dam told The News on Wednesday that the capacity of the dam was 339 feet and if it rained more in the catchment area, the dam could fill up to its capacity, or even overflow.

The official said that complete 100 million gallons of water per day (MGD) could be supplied to areas of District West, such as Orangi Town, Baldia and SITE. The last time the dam reached its full capacity was in 2013. The Hub Dam, however, is not only a source of water for Karachi, but also supplies water to Hub and Lasbela district and the surrounding areas for irrigation purposes. The official further said that the rainwater from far-flung mountainous areas of Balochistan takes time to reach the dam. When the dam’s lake area receives direct rainfall, including a few of its catchment areas in Khuzdar and Kirthar Range it sees a sharp increase in its water level.

Meanwhile, according to a press statement from the KWSB, their North East Karachi (NEK) pumping station faces power failure, due to which city couldn’t be supplied 160 million gallons. The areas affected are Gulistan-e-Jauhar, Scheme 33, New Karachi and North Karachi.

PTI thanks Pak Army

PTI Sindh President Haleem Adil Sheikh issued a statement on Wednesday in which he thanked the Pakistan Army for taking swift action in erecting an embankment along the M-9 Superhighway, effectively saving the Ahsanabad grid station from being inundated by floodwater.

Sheikh also paid a visit to various other urban areas that had been struck hard by the torrential rains, including the areas of M-9 Superhighway, Cattle Market, Shahbaz Goth, Wazeer Goth, Ahsanabad, Saadi Town and other nearby regions.

He reviewed the situation at hand and met with the Pakistan Army’s concerned relief teams in order to outline a strategy moving forward.

In a statement made outside the grid station of Ahsanabad, Sheikh claimed that if the Pakistan Army hadn’t erected the embankment that saved the grid station, half of Karachi would have been without power by now. He said that the leaders of his party had been present there throughout the night, but there had been no sightings of Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah or his ministers.

He explained that the floodwater near the Superhighway originated from the hills near Balochistan, not from the rainfall taking Karachi by storm. He demanded a thorough examination of all dams constructed without sufficient surveys conducted to approve their designs, and placed the blame for these faulty structures on political leaders who had only been concerned about their farmlands when building these dams.

He said that different villages of PS-99 had been submerged in floodwater, and he mentioned the Cattle Market of the Superhighway in particular. Twenty-two innocent lives had been lost, including those of children, due electrocution as a result of negligence on the part of the power utility, Sheikh alleged and went on to add that the PPP was partly to blame for the suffering endured by the public, seeing as they robbed the nation of its resources for the past decade instead of carrying out development works.

He also stated that various other towns in Sindh besides Karachi were hit hard by the rain, especially Hyderabad, and demanded action to be taken against the Hesco chief for negligence. Sheikh claimed that the PPP’s political agenda had already been washed down the drain, seeing as Bilawal Zardari was holding meetings in air-conditioned rooms while the rest of Sindh was drowning in rainwater.

He also held the KE accountable for remaining out of the picture and not taking action to save their grid station, and demanded the agreement regarding the privatisation of the organisation to be revisited.