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| October 30, 2007 | Tuesday | Shawwal 17, 1428 |
KARACHI: Major fire at Iqbal Centre averted
KARACHI, Oct 29: The outbreak of what could have been a major fire was averted on Monday at Iqbal Centre on M. A. Jinnah Road as a fire brigade engine reached the spot within a minute of the eruption of the fire, witnesses and firefighters said.
They said a fire broke out in one of the more than 240 shops, most of them dealing in rexine and artificial leather, in the basement of the residential-cum-commercial plaza at around 10.45pm. As smoke started coming out of the shutters of the shop (D-7), a shopkeeper rang up the fire-brigade service.
Fireman Zakir Hussain told Dawn that he was with a fire-engine at the Radio Pakistan building, opposite Iqbal Centre, when they received a fire call at the nearby building. “It took us hardly one minute to reach the spot and we swiftly extinguished the fire on a plank before it could engulf the 12x12-foot shop packed with highly inflammable rexine,” he added.
Shop owner Mohammed Javaid had not reached there before the fire broke out in his shop. “I was on my way to the shop and reached there to find goods inside the shop gutted,” he said.
The general secretary of the shopkeepers association of Iqbal Centre, Zia Umer Sehgal, told Dawn that an electric short-circuit caused the fire. “There is no possibility of any subversion.”
Mr Sehgal said the power supply had not been properly restored to the Iqbal Centre by the KESC since May 30, when a devastating fire broke out at the plaza. “The KESC gave us electricity through kundas (hooks) and it hasn’t restored the supply properly,” he added.
The shopkeepers’ representative said the shopkeepers had been paying bills on an average basis to the KESC since then. “We have moved applications to the power utility for the installation of billing meters and other infrastructure, but they are not co-operating with us,” he added.
The main part of the century-old Radio Pakistan building, where a huge fire gutted all 14 studios and destroyed equipment and instruments on Sunday, is intact and the base structure of the devastated portion is repairable.
Passing on this piece of information to Dawn on Monday, sources said the gutted portion was not the part of the main building housing the Karachi station of Radio Pakistan since 1949.
Meanwhile, a five-member team of the Karachi Building Control Authority inspected the Radio Pakistan building to assess its status.
KBCA chief Rauf Akhtar Farooqi told Dawn that the inspection committee, comprising three structural engineers, a civil engineer and an architect, would submit its report within two days.
Mr Farooqui, who also visited the building on Monday, said the two-storey main building had an RCC (reinforced cement concrete) roof while the gutted portion’s roof was made of steel trusses with a false wooden ceiling.
”In my personal opinion, the base structure of the gutted portion, which is attached to the main building, is repairable and there is no threat to the structure,” he said, adding: “Let the inspection committee’s report come”.
Iqbal Azam Faridi, station director of the Radio Pakistan Karachi, told Dawn that the fire did not cause any damage to either the archival material or sound record as the library was safe.
However, he said the losses of infrastructure and the equipment were huge. “In the VIP studio, a historic chair used by the first prime minister of Pakistan was also partially damaged.”
The station director said the radio broadcast was suspended only for three minutes as it was restored immediately from the standby transmitters at the New Broadcasting House at the Civic Centre. “There are six to seven studios at the NBH, but they are well equipped and the broadcast will continue from there without any difficulty,” he added.
Mr Faridi said the accounts and administration offices in the main building were functioning as usual.
He said the director-general of the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation, Javed Akhtar, visited the devastated portion of the building.
He said a team was formed by the PBC with an additional secretary for information as its member to ascertain the losses and damage caused by the fire.
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