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39 dead in Karachi rains

By admin | June 24, 2007

KARACHI: Thirty-nine people were counted dead and over 150 injured with the toll expected to rise by 15, the Sindh governor confirmed Saturday after the first lashing of monsoon rains battered Karachi.

Heavy rains swept the city with the wind blowing at about 60 knots or 69.1MPH. As a result, the temperature in Karachi dropped from 44.3 degrees Celsius to 26 degrees Celsius. By the filing of this report 17.3mm of rain had been recorded.

Bodies started piling up at hospitals soon after the rain started at about 4:15pm. Medico-legal officers at five government and private hospitals said that there was mass confusion as unidentified bodies were arriving. Trees fell, walls and tin roofs collapsed, giant billboards keeled over and live electric wires; these were the main causes of death. Fatal traffic accidents were also reported.

Ambulances struggled to make their way through the roads that had turned into gushing rivers. A major traffic jam developed along the main arteries of Shahra-e-Faisal, the dug-up I. I. Chundrigar Road and at Water Pump, Nazimabad. Thirty-two KESC grid stations closed down in the rain.

The Sindh chief minister’s adviser for home affairs, Wasim Akhtar, said that the licenses of all those advertisement companies whose billboards had fallen would face action. He ordered for the rest to be dismantled before the next rain.

More rain is expected across Sindh, according to the Pakistan metrology department with the coastal belt particularly vulnerable.

The monsoon arrived two weeks before schedule, as it usually started in the first week of July and ended around September 15, according to the regional metrology centre’s director, Muhammad Tauseef Alam. Before the rain, the temperature in Karachi was at a blistering 44.3 degrees Celsius. Alam told Daily Times that the minimum rain was recorded in New Karachi at 3mm.

Topics: Pakistan News |