An army of experts in various fields, heads of all relevant provincial departments, the entire City District Government Karachi and a large number of volunteer civil society organisations came forward with their selfless services to make the proposed disaster management plan a success to avoid a catastrophe by responding promptly and work swiftly to any natural or other disaster.
However, after a long series of meetings, seminars, presentations, as well as finalisation of study reports, the whole exercise stopped and the issue was put on the back burner.
Considering the spirit and enthusiasm demonstrated by all those involved, especially Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad and a team of ministers, advisers, secretaries and senior officials of vital relief and rescue departments, it was almost sure that a disaster management agency, with all essential machinery and equipment and fully capable to more swiftly launch any emergency relief work, was about to be set up. But headway in this regard was made during the following months until a disaster-like situation knocked at the doors of Karachi on Aug 17 when more than 10 million citizens of the metropolis faced the wrath of nature.
More than a couple of million of people remained stranded for more than 15 hours on roads and streets wading through one to three feet high floodwaters after a long spell of torrential rain and waiting for rescuers to help them reach home. The situation turned horrible after sunset when most areas of the city plunged into darkness and streetlights also turned off.
Scores of people were electrocuted and there was no relief agency coming to the rescue of those vulnerable to electric shock while live cables hanged over their heads. Even the recognised NGOs like Edhi Foundation could not move to collect bodies in the absence of some relief agency that could help volunteers to carry out their operation.
It was a terrible ordeal for hundreds of thousands of people who had got their vehicles, mainly cars and motorcycles, broken down on flooded roads and had to abandon them.
Flooded roads and streets kept life across the city virtually crippled, confining most of the citizens to the place where they happened to be, till there was light (sunshine) on Friday morning and floodwater receded in some areas.
The role of existing handicapped and ill-equipped departments, like police, fire brigade, ambulance services, etc., was in question as most fire-tenders were being used in ‘shifting’ water from one place to the other and not rescuing people in distress. Police, Rangers and workers of welfare organisations were nowhere visible. The stranded people had to face all sorts of risks and hazards – electrocution, plunge in ditches or manholes, injury from falling trees and billboards – while struggling hard to get out of the horrible situation.Dozens of small vehicles remained dumped along almost all roads and streets for the next two days though the vehicles on Sharea Faisal and M.A. Jinnah Road had been removed next morning by their owners to avoid a confrontation with police.
Dug-up roads, innumerable now, had turned into ‘death traps’ as the small and long trenches were not visible and there was no barrier around any of them to warn a would-be-victim to stay away. Unfortunately, the number of such trenches at the moment is the biggest, the city has ever had. In fact, there are several in every small locality and along all the thoroughfares.
The civic authorities are describing their act of digging up such a large number of roads and streets at a time as ‘a small trouble for big comfort’ but the fed-up citizens who had been through the ordeal on Thursday night were heard saying that the trenches and the hollows of the underpasses might become ‘mass graves’ much before comfort came to their life.
Not surprisingly, the absence of an emergency relief system was talk of the town which should have been in place by now, 10 months after its need was badly felt considering the handicap in coping with the October 8 earthquake.
Had there been such an agency at work in this emergency situation, Karachiites would not have experienced the horrors of the natural calamity that still hounds each and every citizen of this city.
The chaotic conditions in Clifton, Defence, Lyari, Malir, Landhi and Korangi, where people are still undergoing unendurable miseries owing to flooded houses, breakdown of all utility services and devastation of road and communication network, even several days after the rainfall reflect lack of resources and capability that our agencies must possess to cope with an emergency situation.
In fact, it was a miracle that no less than two million people, who had left their workplaces on Thursday evening and caught in rain and deluge of sewage-mixed rainwater, managed to reach home, though many of them could make it after a night-long ‘voyage’ without any help from any relief and rescue agency. But miracles do not happen every time and, as such, availability of a fully equipped and smart agency with a strong corps of volunteers is need of the hour.