Merchandise worth millions of rupees was reduced to ashes when fire broke out at city's leading shopping mall, H. Karim Bukhsh Departmental Store on Friday morning. A security guard, Muhammad Zafar was killed in the incident after experiencing suffocation during the incident, Chief Fire Officer, Raja Muhammad Altaf told APP. The fire which started at 5.30 am in the morning, damaged third and fourth floors of the five-story building located in posh Liberty Market, Gulberg.
This is the second departmental store gutted in a period of one year after Alfatah Store that was completely destroyed early last year. Another shopping center, Pace was gutted in September 2001.
According to architectural experts, the main reason for huge losses due to fire, were too close structures of the buildings, which hamper the activities to put out fire in case of any inferno.
This scribe witnessed completely burnt goods, mainly garments, toys and imported cloth.
The fire tenders were able to douse the fire at 3.00 pm after hectic efforts of nine and a half-hour. "It was a herculean task to douse fire in a completely close building with no proper openings needed for spraying water for fire control," Raja Altaf said.
Meanwhile, Punjab Governor, Lieutenant General Khalid Maqbool (Retd) and City District Nazim Lahore and other senior officials reached the spot soon after hearing the news about the fire and supervised the fire-fighting activity.
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