THE sound of excavators removing the debris of a multi-storey building permeates Moosa Colony, where several homes — and indeed many lifetimes worth of memories — went down in a cloud of smoke and rubble right in front of their eyes, not more than 48 hours ago.

Now, it is all rubble, under which lie the crushed dreams of the families that dwelled here. It was not the stones or the steel bars they saw, but the hard-earned life savings, which turned into ashes in a matter of seconds.

More than a dozen families, who would have been sitting in their rooms under the fan to escape from the hot and humid weather in the city, were sitting under the scorching beams of sun as the machinery tried to recover the belongings of the residents.

As I reached out to a few people in the crowd who, as they said, “were left with nothing than the clothes they were wearing”, an old woman, aged more than 60 years, held my hand and started crying.

Farzana, who was residing on the third floor of the apartment building shared that her son-in-law bought the house paying everything he had. “Not only that, all I had was Rs2.5lac, and I gave that to my daughter so she can keep it if something happens to me. But that too has gone. I am poor. I have lost everything,” she said while tears rolled down her cheeks.

Dozens of people, including women, were sitting on the footpath with disbelief in their eyes as what had happened with them, and among them was Salman, another resident of the building, who had shifted at the place four months ago.

With hopelessness in his voice, he said: “I am sitting here since it happened. It’s all lost now. I paid Rs3 million for it. Now, the builder and his partner have switched off their phones. We are sitting here, what else can we do?”

Volunteers of some welfare and political organisations, wearing neon coloured vests with their group’s name printed on it, were making sure that no one gets close to the excavator which was removing the debris so that no one could get hurt. Between them was Mukhtar Ahmed, or as everyone else was calling him, Bagga bhai. Mr Ahmed was a hero in the crisis as the people said that he was the one who avoided the loss of lives by evacuating the affected and nearby buildings.

“It is a miracle that no one died, and it was Bagga bhai who made it happen. It would have been impossible to avoid casualties if he wasn’t there. He convinced everyone, and even now, he is looking after the operation for us and making sure that we get whatever is left under the debris,” I overheard while standing with Mr Ahmed.

“You are from media, right? Let me tell you that it wasn’t the rain, but the irregularity of departments and the abuse of power that leads to this. The construction of the building started in November, and the walls started to crack after three-four months. I had rented a barber shop and also owned a portion on the first floor of the building. It is the builder — Yaqoob and his son Fawad — and their partner Amir Baba, who is a policeman, and also a resident in the vicinity, who are responsible for it,” Mr Ahmed said and added that “the building had been sealed twice in a month while it was under-construction, but the construction continued and there was still some finishing work left on the sixth floor of the building. Don’t you smell something fishy? You tell me how you think it happened?”

The neighbours, whose only mistake was that they had their houses and shops next to the building that collapsed, were also under the open sky as the Sindh Building Control Authority marked them as dangerous.

“Bhai, I have a milkshop and I live above that. You tell me, what did I do wrong? I didn’t live in the building. I had nothing to do with it. I am paying price for nothing,” said Zohaib, who had a house and shop next to the building.

If there was something common between all of them other than the agony, misery and suffering, it was their anger and disappointment over the government who did not “offer even a glass of water”.

“We have been here for more than a day. We have slept on the road. No government official has paid any heed. No one even offered us a glass of water. We knew the building was going to collapse, so we got the PMT [pole mounted transformer] removed by K-Electric on a war footing basis, and avoided another misery. We set up tent on our own. No one [from government] came to rescue us,” thundered Faisal, another resident of the building, who is also contesting in the July 24 local government elections for a councillor seat.

Another neighbour yelled from a distance to make sure that I hear him loud and clear and said: “We want the builder to pay the damage. Not to me, but to everyone who has been affected. Why should we bear the loss for someone else’s incompetence and irregularity? We will protest as well,” and added with a downhearted smile: “You and I both know, nothing will happen.”

Published in Dawn, July 20th, 2022