The death toll from a garment factory at Karachi's Hub River Road rose to 289, many of whom perished because they were unable to escape building that lacked emergency exits and basic safety equipment such as alarms and sprinklers. The horrific toll highlights the atrocious state of industrial safety in Pakistan, where many factories are set up illegally in the country's densely populated cities, and owners often pay officials bribes to ignore safety violations.
The deadly blaze, which erupted on Tuesday night, was at a garment factory in Karachi, the country's economic heart. The death toll there rose to 289 people Wednesday, as fire-fighters battled the flames for hours, said senior government official Roshan Ali Sheikh. It was one of the worst industrial accidents in Pakistan's 65-year history, and Sheikh said the death toll could rise because rescue workers were still pulling bodies out from the site in Karachi.
Most of the deaths were caused by suffocation as people caught in the basement were unable to escape when it filled with smoke, said the top fire-fighter Ehtisham-ud-Din. There were no fire exits, and at least one of the main doors leading out was locked, he said. It's unclear what caused the fire. Workers on higher floors of the five-story building struggled to make it out of windows that were covered with metal bars. Many were injured when they jumped from the building, including a 27-year-old pregnant woman who was injured in the fall.
Another injured factory worker, Mohammad Ilyas, speaking from the hospital, said he was working with roughly 50 other men and women on one of the floors when suddenly a fireball came from the staircase. "I jumped from my seat as did others and rushed toward the windows, but iron bars on the windows barred us from escaping. Some of us quickly took tools and machines to break the iron bars," he said. "That was how we managed to jump out of the windows down to the ground floor."
His leg was injured in the fall. Others weren't so lucky. An Associated Press reporter saw a charred body partially hanging out one of the factory's barred windows. It appeared the victim tried to escape but couldn't make it through the bars. "There were no safety measures taken in the building design. There was no emergency exit. All the people got trapped," said senior police official Amjad Farooqi. The factory's managers have fled and are being sought by police, said Sheikh, the senior government official in Karachi. Authorities have placed the name of the factory's owner on a list of people who are not allowed to leave the country, said Sheikh.
A fire also swept through a four-story shoe factory in the eastern city of Lahore on Tuesday night, killing 25 people, some from burns and some from suffocation, said senior police officer Multan Khan. The factory was illegally set up in a residential part of the city.
It broke out when people in the building were trying to start their generator after the electricity went out. Sparks from the generator made contact with chemicals used to make the shoes, igniting the blaze. Pakistan faces widespread blackouts, and many people use generators to provide electricity for their houses or to run businesses.
One of the workers, Muhammad Shabbir, said he had been working at the factory for six months along with his cousin. He said all the chemicals and the generator were located in the garage, which was also the only way out of the building. When the fire ignited, there was no way to escape. Shabbir said he had just gone outside the factory when the fire started, but his cousin was severely burned and died at the hospital.
A fire-fighter at the scene, Numan Noor, said the reason most of the victims died was because the main escape route was blocked. "The people went to the back side of the building but there was no access, so we had to make forceful entries and ... rescue the people," said Noor.
Fire-fighters broke holes in the factory's brick walls to reach victims inside. At the morgue, bodies were lined up on a hallway floor, covered with white sheets. Karachi fire chief Ehtesham Salim said rescue workers were finding large groups of bodies on the lower floors of the factory. "Our fire-fighters are finding bodies in greater numbers from the lower floors of the factory," he said.
"We didn't find bodies in ones or twos, but in the dozens, which is why the death toll is increasing so alarmingly," he added. Salim said the fire probably originated on the ground floor, giving those workers in the basement and on that level less time to escape. Abdus Salam, a doctor at Civil Hospital, said at least 65 workers suffered broken bones after jumping out of windows.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said he had ordered an inquiry into both fires, as officials said the factory in Karachi in particular had been flimsily built, lacked emergency exits and had developed cracks in the walls. "It was packed like a box with little room left for ventilation. There were no emergency exits," Salim said.
According to workers, the factory produced underwear and plastic utensils. Salim said the disaster was Karachi's "biggest fire in terms of deaths in decades". In January 2009, 40 people were killed, more than half of them children, when a fire engulfed dozens of wooden homes in impoverished Baldia neighbourhood. According to central bank data, the textiles industry contributed 7.4 percent to Pakistan's GDP in 2011 and employed 38 percent of the manufacturing sector workforce. It accounted for 55.6 percent of total exports.
Noman Ahmed, from the NED University of Engineering and Technology in Karachi, said few industries and businesses implement the law on safety and fire exits, finding it easy to avoid because of lack of effective monitoring. "Most of our shopping centres and markets too have no safety mechanism, which the authorities should review seriously, otherwise it could cause graver tragedies in future," he said. Officials said the cause of the fire was unknown but Rauf Siddiqi, the industry minister, said the owner was under investigation for negligence. "We have ordered an inquiry into how the fire erupted and why proper emergency exits were not provided at the factory so that the workers could escape," Siddiqi said.