The fire broke out at the electric meter room located at the first floor of the six-storey Karim Centre on Zaibunnisa Street and spread to other meter rooms located on each floor, engulfing the shops, general secretary of the Karim Centre Traders Welfare Association, Aslam Qureshi, told Dawn.
He claimed that Karim Centre was perhaps the biggest cloth market of the country under a single roof.
He said that at least 75 shops were gutted in the fire while 100 were partially affected.
According to the fire brigade assessment, about 120 shops were gutted while over 50 shops suffered partial damaged, but their merchandise was rendered useless due to smoke.
The building could not be recommissioned perhaps at least for a week for business, opined a firefighter at the spot.
Husain Ali, who lost his shop in the fire, said that the cost of the total damage would certainly run into billions of rupees.
The fire which broke out around 1:45 am on Monday was put out by Tuesday evening by the fire department.
Even on Tuesday evening the building was extremely hot from inside and smoke filled the premises.
Chief fire officer Atta ur Rehman told Dawn that around 200 workers trapped on the top floor of the building were rescued through snorkel. Those workers mainly belonged to the stitching units which were working late in the night due to Eid season.
The chief fire officer told Dawn that all the exit points were blocked, the improper electrical wiring added to the spread of fire.
The presence of numerous small petrol-filled generators on each floor also added to the fire and the huge quantity of combustible material made matters worse, Atta ur Rehman said.
Regarding the building structure, he said that at the moment the superstructure was intact and their was no danger of collapse.
However, he added that the KBCA might carry out a survey and determine the status of the building structure.
Following the fire, electricity and sui gas supplies were disconnected by the concerned civic agencies to minimise the damage.
This reporter also met a Kuwait-based trader standing outside the centre, with agony writ large on his face.
Mohammad Akram told Dawn that he had booked garment orders from Kuwait with several shops at Karim Centre and had just arrived in the city a day earlier to pick up the consignment.
Two shops where Akram had placed his orders were completely gutted in the fire, “I am still clueless as to how I will sustain my losses” Akram said.
General secretary of the KCTWA, Aslam Qureshi, told Dawn that at least 15,000 people work at Karim Centre on daily basis. At the time of the incident some 200 workers were present in the building.
The centre housed 1500 shops, with ladies garments shops on the first floor, gents garments shops on the second, children wear on the third and fourth floors and stitching units on the fifth and sixth floors.
“ The Karachi Building Control Authority, the builder and the KESC are equally to blame for their criminal negligence which resulted in the massive blaze” Qureshi said.
The general secretary said that since 1993 they had been pursuing the government functionaries against the illegal activities of the builder, but no action had yet been taken.
Another shopkeeper told Dawn that the builder had even sold out the parking space of the building constructing 150 shops. The shops were even built at the ventilating passages on each floor by the builder, he said.
The project was launched in 1974, the possession of the shops began in 1979 and in 1981 the first floor of the building started business.
The traders association of the centre demanded an immediate inquiry into the incident and demanded that the small traders should be paid compensation for the damages.
Meanwhile, according to a PTCL statment, its top officials also visited the site of the fire on Tuesday to assess the extent of the damage caused to the PTCL network.
Approximately, 450 working telephone lines were affected during the fire, the restoration work would commence when the building was handed over to the civic agencies by the fire brigade, the statment added.
Officials of the city government including the city Nazim, the Naib Nazim and the DCO also visited Karim Centre on Tuesday to assess the damage.
