Islamabad, Jan 26 Shock has turned into anger in Pakistan's Karachi as the death toll from the fire incident in Gul Plaza has increased to 73. The fire at Gul Plaza erupted on the night of January 17 and took nearly two days to fully extinguish it. So far, 73 people have died and over 1,100 shops are in ruins following the fire incident.
"The clock resets for the building. Our faith in government, however, is stuck at zero," journalist and podcaster Muna Khan wrote in Pakistan's leading daily Dawn.
"The systems meant to prevent such loss are hollow. When they speak of inquiries, of compensating families, of resilience, of rebuilding, we know what they’re not saying — this was preventable, that our loss was their failure, that concrete can be replaced but trust, once burned, takes generations to restore. And we have been burned plenty," she added.
Khan detailed how a fire does not only destroy things but also ends the continuity of experience.
A building, she asserted, is not just a structure but a vessel of layered experience and the fire does not only destroy goods and furniture but also cuts the threads that connect people to their past selves -- to the people they have loved and to the futures they had imagined would unfold.
"How many times must Karachiites rebuild what incompetence burns down? We will do it because we know what stands behind these burned buildings — the will to endure, to rebuild, to continue. Thankfully, that has not been touched by flames," she wrote.
The shops that would have been taken over by grandchildren who are not yet born are lost following the devastating fire incident in Gul Plaza, the instructor of journalism wrote. Fire, she said, does not understand memory or the importance of the building as the things that are most important burn as easily as the things that do not matter at all.
"What comes next will be built by us but it will rise in the shadow of a truth we have long known, especially in Karachi: no one protects us," the author added.
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