KARACHI, May 31: Residents and shop-owners of Iqbal Centre, the residential-cum-commercial centre on M.A. Jinnah Road where a fire broke out on Wednesday night, mounted a salvage operation as the city government initiated an inquiry into the cause of the fire on Thursday.

Smoke was still billowing from the shops, of which around 80 to 100 were totally gutted by fire. The worst affected row of shops is located between Iqbal Centre and the neighbouring Advani building.

Many shopkeepers and their employees, visibly dejected with blackened faces and clothes, were busy retrieving their remaining stocks from the parking area of the building and from the shops on the left side of Iqbal Centre. A godown is located in the parking of the multi-storey building.

“I have lost my entire shop containing foams and related articles in the fire,” said Nasrullah, a depressed shop-owner sitting outside his gutted shop. “I cannot speak for the others but I have suffered losses of millions of rupees. Perhaps the collective losses could climb into the hundreds of millions of rupees,” he observed.

As for the residents of the 217 apartments above the shops, almost all of the families have moved out from the premises, moving in with relatives in other parts of the city.

“We have no electricity, gas supply or water and smoke is continuously coming out of the shops, which has made this place unliveable at the moment,” said Mohammad Karim, who was coming down from the building with some family members carrying valuables and other belongings.

The pre-partition Advani building was also evacuated as residents were not able to stay due to the same reasons.

“The fire has been brought under control. Since there was a lot of petro-chemical material in the building, we faced a lot of difficulty in controlling it,” Chief Fire Officer Mohammad Ehtashamuddin said.

“The deputy chief fire officer fell unconscious while a station officer, Riaz, suffered slight burns due to chemicals,” he added.

To ensure an uninterrupted supply of water for the fire-fighting operation, over 250 water tankers were arranged by the city government while the Rangers also supplied tankers. Apart from the 22 fire tenders of the city government, fire-fighting vehicles of the Pakistan Navy and KPT also took part in the operation.

Meanwhile, the residents of Iqbal Centre claimed that they had seen the writing on the wall and had warned the authorities of a potential disaster at the location.

“There are some 350 to 400 shops housed in the premises of Iqbal Centre. Fifty per cent of these shops contained inflammable materials like chemicals, adhesive solutions, foams and similar hazardous material,” claimed Ghulam Mustafa, General Secretary of the residential union of the centre, while talking to Dawn.

He said that on April 9, 2007, he had submitted an application to the Risala Police Station requesting the removal of what he called highly inflammable material from the premises of the residential complex.

“Subsequently, an inquiry officer was appointed to look into the matter, but it all went in vain,” he remarked.

A similar application was submitted to relevant officials of UC 5, Nanakwara, Saddar Town, citing imminent danger in the presence of the inflammable material, but no action was taken by the authorities concerned, he added.

“A legal notice was also given to the 12 godowns located on the first floor of the building in 2006 by the Iqbal Centre union,” Mr Mustafa added.

The union members said that there are 70 to 80 illegal godowns constructed in the parking-lot of the building with the connivance of the builder, posing a potential threat to the residents.

Residents appreciated the role played by City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal, who, they said, was present almost throughout the night supervising the effort, but were highly critical of the Sindh chief minister who, according to them, didn’t even bother to inquire about the incident.

Meanwhile the city nazim on Thursday ordered an inquiry to ascertain the facts behind the cause of the fire, while the Karachi Building Control Authority has been asked for a full survey of the building.