It was mainly heat that killed them. Moeover, you could not find a bottle of cold water to give heat shocked patients because every single market and tea stall, snack shops and food shop called 'hotel' were closed. The temperature hit the unbearable and unusual high of 45 degrees centigrade on the second of Ramazan, Saturday, when the greatest number of deaths occurred in Karachi.
In 1983 Karachi sizzled at 45 degrees centigrade but about four or five people died of heat shock. It was June, but it was not Ramazan. People go to work, the labours to building sites or to do road repair which two things are currently demanding a big labour force. People will go to their factories and sweatshops to work in the heat. The majority will take a bus to school, college and to work place, crammed and sweating in the vehicle. The PACC which never closes, even when there is a terrorist threat or murderous riot, closed for four days following the heatwave because a number of students who arrived on Monday by bus fainted and all that could be done for them was fan them to cool them, which is a first-aid treatment for heat shock, or rather, one of the first aid treatments. More important was to give them water to prevent dehydration, which is the killer, and to pour cold water on their heads and the soles of feet of a person who has fainted. But in Ramazan, what could be done except fanning the poor students? The PACC shut down. Iqra schools also closed earlier than the scheduled date of summer holiday which was 15 Ramazan.
On last Saturday the whole of Sindh was in the grip of a heatwave but out of the 136 deaths that day 132 died of heat shock in the metropolis. There is no precedent for such a high number of deaths due to heat shock anywhere in world let alone Pakistan.Everyone in Karachi was suffering from the extremely high temperature but those who died were people on the streets, out to work, out to catch a bus. The six women and five children who died on the hot-as-hell Saturday were from cramped homes. But even the houses of middle-class Karachi are not built with concern for thermal efficiency standards. I know of only one public building, the Civic Centre, which has observed the thermal efficiency standard and one Karachi architect who employed the wind-catcher principle of Thatta to build his personal house. His clients are not interested. Thus the city's office buildings, apartment buildings and posh homes depend on air-conditioning or fans instead of a good ventilation system. The most harassed workers in the city are the electricians. Fans and ACs have crashed by the hundreds. There is not a locality where every fan and AC functioned OK. But even fans were useless in the heatwave. The breeze was like hot air thrown out of a furnace.
Power breakdown were bound to happen. Why are people complaining? Don't they realise they are the reason for the increased pressure on power supply by the double use of every kind of cooling possible, which includes ACs, fans, fridges and freezers how many times have you opened the fridge to get cold water? The constant open and shut consumes power because the cold air is released through the open door and the compressor has to work more to make up the cooling loss. In the 1983 heatwave when the temperature soared to 45 degrees centigrade, there were some posh homes of the very rich that had air conditioners, today the entire house is air conditioned. Do you have any idea how much power is consumed? In that year middle-class homes had fans only today even rat hole commercial area apartments have ACs. Then there was no power outage. So people survived. There were no power shortage riots. You say most of the poor areas have no electricity. True, but the city in the 1980s did not have so many poor, or refugees, or IDPs living in Karachi. The poor suffered then, but now their suffering has magnified.
The situation has given birth to a profound question whether we should return to the old practice of half-shutter down of eateries, the serving of drinks to those who are ill and not fasting but need water when they are out shopping. Heat exhaustion is a killer just as much as the dehydration in heatwave.
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