Islamabad, Pakistan – A fire that tore through a shopping centre over the weekend in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, has killed at least 23 people, including a firefighter, as rescuers race to find dozens more still missing.
The city’s biggest fire in more than a decade broke out late on Saturday at Gul Plaza, a three-storey commercial building home to more than 1,200 shops selling a wide range of goods. It took more than 24 hours to fully extinguish the blaze.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
City authorities said parts of the building have collapsed and debris and poor ventilation are severely hampering rescue efforts.
Mayor Murtaza Wahab said a formal inquiry would be launched into the fire under the supervision of the city’s commissioner.
Speaking to a private news channel on Monday night, Wahab confirmed that more than 60 people remained missing and the search operation is ongoing after the firefighting operation has been completed. “Fire flares up again during the cooling process,” he said, describing one of the challenges faced by emergency personnel.
Wahab also said the government of Sindh, the province where Karachi is located, has announced compensation of 10 million rupees ($35,000) for each family that has lost a loved one in the tragedy.
The Gul Plaza fire is the latest in a series of major incidents in Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial hub and home to nearly 25 million people.
Here, we look at what is known about what happened at Gul Plaza, why rescue efforts have been so difficult and what lies behind Karachi’s persistent fire safety challenges.
What happened at Gul Plaza?
Located in Karachi’s historic Saddar area along one of the city’s main arteries, MA Jinnah Road, Gul Plaza is a well-known business centre. Its shops sell jewellery, household items, carpets, bags, crockery and other goods.
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said the building was packed on Saturday night during the wedding season, a factor that contributed to the high death toll.
More than 72 hours after the fire broke out, officials have yet to confirm its cause. Police officials said on the night of the blaze that it may have been triggered by a short circuit.
Sindh Police Inspector General Javed Alam Odho said it appeared the fire was caused by a circuit breaker but stressed that “nothing definitive can be said about this at this time.”
Namra Khalid, a Karachi-based urban researcher, said a detailed investigation is needed before conclusions can be drawn.
“However, I think the main concern should be about what allowed the fire to become so big at such a rapid pace,” Khalid told Al Jazeera. “Fires can start anywhere, but what structural, systemic failures allowed it to spread at such scale, and why such failures are allowing repeated fires in the city at an unimaginable scale?”
Why did rescue efforts take so long?
Rescue officials said the operation to recover those still missing is still being conducted because the size of the building and the extent of the damage mean they must proceed cautiously.
Officials told local media that much of the structure has collapsed and what remains may have to be demolished due to severe structural damage.
Hassan ul-Haseeb, a spokesperson for the provincial rescue service Rescue 1122, said access to the site was a major challenge on the night of the fire.
“On the one hand, the road was narrow, and on the other hand, a large number of people were there just to watch the spectacle, due to which the entire road was blocked and water tankers had difficulty finding their way there,” he told Al Jazeera.
Ul-Haseeb added that the materials inside the plaza, including large amounts of plastic, caused the fire to repeatedly flare up despite sustained efforts by firefighters, prolonging the operation.
He said people on the ground floor were able to escape using the building’s 13 entry and exit points. Many of those trapped on the upper floors, however, were unable to find their way out, leading to multiple deaths.
‘A familiar tragedy’
The Gul Plaza blaze is being described as Karachi’s largest fire since the 2012 Baldia factory fire, which killed more than 250 people.
The fire at the Ali Enterprises factory, a garments manufacturing site, in Karachi’s Baldia town area began in the afternoon of September 11, 2012, and raged for more than 12 hours. Officials at the time said the factory was crammed with combustible materials, including piles of clothes and chemicals.
Eight years later, a Pakistani court ruled that the Baldia inferno was a case of arson, not an accident. The court issued death sentences to two men who belonged to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a political party that was in power in the city at the time.
In recent years, fires have continued to break out across Karachi.
City planners and engineers estimated that about 70 percent of the city’s residential, commercial and industrial buildings lack adequate fire safety systems.
In both 2023 and 2024, Karachi recorded more than 2,500 fires.
In August, eight people were killed when a warehouse burned to the ground because of a short circuit. In June, another shopping mall was destroyed and hundreds of shops razed although no casualties were reported.
Muhammad Toheed, a Karachi-based urban planner and director of the research organisation Urban Lab, said the repeated incidents point to longstanding failures in governance.
“The government cannot make any excuses at all since the fire brigade and such related rescue work falls under its purview, and it is a clear and simple governance failure over a long period of time,” he told Al Jazeera.
“The building codes, safety mechanisms, routine inspections, ensuring presence of fire extinguishers and necessary training drills, all of these are practically nonexistent,” he added.
‘Chronic failures’
For a city of more than 20 million people, Karachi is served by just 35 fire stations, according to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, which oversees the fire brigade. According to Rescue 1122’s ul-Haseeb, Karachi has only 57 fire trucks and six ladder trucks.
Toheed, the urban researcher, said he had visited Gul Plaza frequently and noted that it was relatively better designed than many other buildings in the city with multiple entry and exit points.
“This was a building with fire extinguishers, reasonably sized stairs where people can move and lots of exit points, yet we have so many casualties. If we use Gul Plaza as a benchmark, then the rest of Karachi is a ticking time bomb,” he warned.
Khalid agreed, saying the city is weighed down by informal fixes and chronic failures.
“Lack of regulation, inspection and enforcement have created an environment where safety is optional and accountability is not there, and on top of it, we don’t have the emergency response mechanism,” she said.
Toheed said city authorities also need to urgently address the lack of capacity and training among rescue officials.
“We must start from scratch. It is important to find out what training our rescue officials have as this is a very specialised thing,” he said, referring to some ground reports from the rescue efforts at Gul Plaza suggesting shortcomings.
Khalid said he hoped the Gul Plaza fire would prompt change.
“We keep reading about such events, but then news fades out. But I really hope that this time people remember what happened and the administration is pushed into action to do something about it, to ensure we don’t have another Gul Plaza-like tragedy in future,” she said.
