KARACHI: An early morning fire destroyed a warehouse of cosmetics goods in the PECHS area, leaving a 28-year-old labourer dead and his co-worker wounded on Wednesday.

The blaze, shortly followed by explosions in the two-storey building, also caused fear and panic in the residential area of PECHS Block 6, said officials and rescue workers.

The cause of fire could not be determined immediately, an official said. But it resulted in the explosion of chemical drums which were used in the production of cosmetics items one after another, he added.

Five tenders took part in the firefighting operation that lasted nearly six hours.

City’s fire chief criticises lack of safety measures at facility

The central fire station recorded the departure of the first fire tender after 8am. “It was a huge fire,” said an official, adding that the building was being used as a godown of different cosmetics items in different packaging. Raw material used in production of these goods was dumped in the godown. It included drums of different chemicals which exploded one after another.

Tehseen Siddiqi, the chief fire officer of the KMC’s fire department, blamed the chemical drums for delay in the firefighting operation as they posed serious threat to the lives of his firemen. He said he would file a report against the owners of the facility, as they did not make any arrangement for safety while storing those items which were vulnerable to fire.

“The facility was being used for storing finished products and raw materials at the same time. I don’t think that the area, where all this was happening, is allowed for such commercial activities,” he added.

The godown, the officials said, was almost empty and only three to four persons were inside when the fire broke out. Two of them rushed out on their own but the rest got stuck inside the building, finding no way to escape the fire.

“After the firefighting was done, we brought [out] two men from the godown — one was dead and another had serious burn wounds,” said an official at the Edhi Foundation. “The body was shifted to the JPMC [Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre] and the injured [person] was moved to the Burns Centre of the Civil Hospital Karachi. The deceased was identified as 28-year-old Salman Sarwar, a worker of the company that owned the godown and the injured person was his 30-year-old colleague, Saeed Ahmed.”

Factory blaze

As the firefighters were busy in PECHS, another blaze was reported near Patel Para where a fire engulfed a three-storey garments factory. Again, the official said, the industrial unit was being operated in a residential area. Due to narrow streets of the neighbourhood, the fire tenders took time to reach the fire site, he added.

“Three fire tenders were used in this operation and no loss of life was reported though one of the workers got injured when he jumped from the first floor of the building to save his life. The total loss suffered by the two units [has not been] estimated, neither the cause of fire,” said a fire official.

Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2017