KARACHI: A young woman suffered burns while over 2,000 people were rescued in a fire that broke out in a multi-storey commercial building on I.I. Chundrigar Road on Monday, officials said.

DIG-South Syed Asad Raza said the fire erupted on the third floor of the Business and Finance Centre near Tower and it spread till the sixth floor.

He said there were 300 offices in the building, where around 2,000 employees worked and all of them were rescued safely. However, he said a woman suffered burn injuries. She was identified as Iqra, 25.

The DIG said that 12 fire engines managed to control the blaze. However, cooling work continued till late in the night.

The occupants of the building were rescued with the help of snorkels. Videos shared on social media also showed that some people were trying to come out of the windows of the affected building.

While the police claimed that some electric short-circuit was the cause of the fire, the K-Electric (KE) claimed that their infrastructure was found ‘intact’.

A KE spokesperson said: “Our teams took immediate action when the fire in the building on I. I. Chundrigar Road was reported. The feeder was switched off immediately and KE teams also reached the incident site instantly to support the fire brigade, rescue teams and the city’s administration.”

“According to preliminary investigations, K-Electric’s infrastructure was not involved in the fire incident as its substation and other KE equipment in the building were found intact,” the spokesperson claimed.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2023