Sumayya Bridge View blaze doused on fourth day

On the fourth day of the Sumayya Bridge View blaze, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s (KMC) firefighters were finally able to put off the flames on Saturday morning at around 10am.

More than one million gallons of water were used to extinguish the fire. KMC Chief Fire Officer Mubin Ahmed told The News that as many as three fire vehicles were on standby on the site to deal with any fire that occurred again inside the building. “The fire brigade will remain on standby at the location for 24 hours,” he said.

The blaze had broken out at the warehouse of a department store in the basement of a multi-storey building situated near Jail Chowrangi. On Thursday, the fire brigade had claimed that they had controlled the blaze and only a few burning patches remained to be doused, which would be achieved in short time. However, that claim proved to be false as the fire was still not completely extinguished throughout Friday with flames continuing to erupt at multiple places in the extremely hot building.

The cause of the fire was apparently the illegal warehouse of the superstore inside the building’s basement, where a huge quantity of cooking oil and other items were stored.

The cooling process, Ahmed said, had also completed on Saturday. However, the basement of the building is filled with water and the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) will be able to access the building once that water was drained.

On this issue, the chief fire officer said the water in the basement was too hot to be drained right then and they needed to wait for one more day to complete the drainage work.

Security plan

The District East deputy commissioner (DC) has asked the relevant departments to prepare a comprehensive security plan for the building.

In a letter, the DC wrote: “It is pertinent to mention here that having declared the fire as class-III blaze, the district administration of the District East has evacuated the entire building in emergency.”

According to the letter, it had been observed during similar incidents in the past that as soon as the cooling process had finished, residents and outsiders tried to enter the building thereby putting their lives and properties at risk.

The DC also observed that robbers and dacoits might also sneak into the building, due to which there was need for a comprehensive security deployment plan to be shared with the security personnel and district administration.