KARACHI: The raging sea made several breaches in the Clifton sea-wall and the menacing breakers; the way they lashed at the 10 feet high sea-wall last night threatened more widespread damage.

The sea swelled by the moon and lashed into fury by the monsoons made the first breaches in the wall at 12 noon, a little before the closing time for offices on Friday [June 23].

Efforts were being made to muster as many labourers as possible to save the wall from the ravages of the sea; and 1,000 men will go to work to repair the breaches early today. When [this writer] visited the sea-battered sea-wall at about midnight last night the breakers washing the wall had turned the ground on the land side of it into a vast lake.

The sea had under-cut the wall at several places. The masonry work had caved in; and the foundations of the wall had been laid bare, as far as I could see. At all these points where the sea-wall had caved in, water gushed across every time a breaker lashed the wall; and swelled the lake formed on the other side of it.

On the sea-side of the wall masonry had been completely washed away for as long as [this writer] could walk along the wall in the dark, with the breakers washing it at frequent intervals....

The group of labourers engaged in land reclamation work, close by, were not concerned with the unforeseen catastrophe; and they sat in their tent hardly 200 yards away from the breaches. The labourers said some openings were made earlier by the Authority in the wall to bring earth from the sea for land reclamation work. Mounds of earth testified to the truth of the statement.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2017