Fire gutted the office of Karachi Mayor Murtaza Wahab on the first floor of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation head office on Tuesday morning (Dawn).
What happened
The fire began around 9:15am, apparently from a spark in the outdoor unit of an air conditioner. Fire tenders and Rescue 1122 brought it under control. No casualties were reported.
The mayor’s office itself was completely gutted and its furniture destroyed. Wooden fittings and a false ceiling accelerated the spread. The adjoining chamber and the conference room were saved.
Who said what
South Deputy Inspector General Asad Raza described it as a “minor fire”.
Mayor Wahab said: “Whether it was a short circuit or something related to the AC, all aspects are being looked into.”
Rescue 1122 spokesman Hassaanul Haseeb Khan confirmed the response.
“Minor” is doing some work there
A fire that destroys a room and everything in it is minor only in the sense that nobody was hurt and the building stands. That distinction matters, but it is worth naming: the DIG’s word describes the outcome, not the event.
The building
The KMC head office on M.A. Jinnah Road is one of Karachi’s landmark colonial-era civic buildings. Wooden fittings and false ceilings are exactly the combination that makes such structures hazardous — the original materials burn, and the later additions hide where the fire is travelling.
The pattern
This is the second building fire we have reported in as many days, after a blaze in the urology ward of Bannu’s Khalifa Gul Nawaz Teaching Hospital, also attributed to an electrical spark and also without casualties.
Two electrical fires in public buildings in two days is not a trend on its own. It is, however, the same failure mode twice, in institutions where the wiring is old and the fire load is furniture.
What is not established
No damage estimate has been published, and no assessment of what records or documents were in the room. Whether the electrical fault was isolated or symptomatic of the building’s wiring is unanswered — the same question left open in Bannu.
