KARACHI: When flames tore through Karachi’s Gul Plaza last weekend, 29-year-old firefighter Furqan Shaukat moved deeper into the burning building as its structure weakened, responding to calls for help from inside moments before the plaza collapsed.
The category-three fire gutted around 1,200 shops in one of Karachi’s busiest commercial districts, killed scores of people and left dozens missing. It also exposed, once again, the extreme risks faced by firefighters in Pakistan’s largest city, particularly when battling intense blazes inside sealed commercial structures built with little regard for safety standards.
Karachi, home to more than 20 million people, operates with just over 20 fire stations and an estimated 120–140 fire tenders, many of them aging or partially functional, according to figures cited by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation and provincial officials over the years. The city’s fire brigade is believed to have fewer than 2,000 firefighters, far below international benchmarks for a megacity of its size, with no citywide hydrant system and chronic shortages of modern protective gear.
“We are told that someone shouted from inside [the building], saying, ‘Save me,’” Shaukat’s brother Muhammad Nauman told Arab News. “Many people were standing outside, but it was him who said, ‘No, I have to save this man.’”
