KARACHI CHRONICLE: Winter fires

Some 50 huts were gutted, but no one was hurt, in a fire that broke out in the dark hours of Sunday morning (December 11) in Gulshan-i-Iqbal Block 13 near Urdu University. In the jargon of Karachi-based Journalists this phenomenon is termed "winter fire". It happens every year the minute the temperature drops and there is a cold nip in the air.
Winter has not properly arrived although we are half way into December. The days are warm but the nights are biting cold, especially on the open planes where the poorest of the poor put up their huts. These huts are tawdry hovels made with a few sticks holding up a roof of straw matting or just rags. The same material also forms the walls. The huts are closely packed and largely used as storage space while the business of living, that is, cooking food, sleeping, washing are done outside. But when it is cold everyone huddles into the cramped space.
The huts do not catch fire in the summer. It always happens in winter. The reason is the high humidity in summer which keeps the building material damp and inflammable. But before winter there is the worst dry spell, the month of October, when every thing becomes bone dry and ready tinder for the slightest spark to set a roaring blaze going. Probably someone flicked out a cigarette butt, probably someone lit a fire to prepare breakfast and threw away the match without realising that the match ember was a potential threat and could start a conflagration. The reason why they are so careless with cigarette butts and matches is that they have been doing the same thing through the year and nothing happened. They do not realise that the scorching dry heat of October has turned their huts into tinder boxes.
Throughout my long career I have noted the winter fires. The pattern does not change. It is also a typical Karachi phenomenon. There is a continual influx of labourers and rural poor into the city. They have no place to dwell, so they put up huts on the open planes. The city is infested with what are technically called "kuchi abaadis". Winter fires do not normally occur in kuchi abaadis that have become permanent settlements, because these are usually made of bricks and have tin roofs. It is always in the temporary settlements or new settlements that winter fires tend to blaze. As long as Karachi is the only place where there is some hope of finding work, any work, there will be an increase in kuchi abbadis. It is simply impossible to control the continual growth of these slap-dash settlements. The only solution is to have more cities where people can find work. Until that happens, there will be no end to Karachi's burden of shanty towns, hutments, hovels and the numerous problems besides land grab that takes place ad nauseum.
Winter fires are not easily put out. It took the firefighting department and police official over two hours to quench the blaze in Gulshan-i-Iqbal last Sunday. How much space do you think those fifty gutted huts had occupied? Not more than sixty square feet. Yet it took so long to quench the flames. The reason is that biodegradable material not only burns fast but the debris is a smouldering mass. Long after the hutments were gutted, and all through Sunday, thick smoke continue to rise from the debris making it difficult for the hut dwellers to do anything for rebuilding their huts. They simply had to sit it out, and spend the night without shelter.
It is not correct that the hut dwellers lost, what the police termed "valuable property". They have no valuables. Any one who has worked in the kuchi abaadis will tell you that they do not even possess cooking utensils beyond an iron griddle or tawa. This tawa is usually shaped like a shallow bowl so that on the convex side the roti can be prepared and on the concave side the vegetables or daal can be cooked. Their few possessions, which are just clothes and may be some money, are kept in a large tin box. Every hut has one such box. When the blaze began, people saved their own lives and their tin boxes.
Winter is setting in later and later every year. There was a time when November was freezing cold so that we used heaters in the house. Winter fires normally occur early morning or at night, and when we heard the sound of fire engines racing down the street we knew winter fire had begun. Over the years there are also fewer winter fires, which is only thanks to the late start or winter.
Nothing is done for improving the quality of life in kuchi abaadis. The authorities do not seem aware that ignoring the lifestyle of hut dwellers has a domino effect on the quality of life of the city as a whole. For instance, the hut dwellers do not have electricity, so they steal it with kundas. They do not have potable water supply, so they break into conduits and water mains. There is no fumigation of the poorest settlements, not even of the most congested Machchar Colony, which makes these settlements the breeding ground of diseases such as dengue that endangers life through the city. Trees are indiscriminately cut down for fuel.
One solution has been to regularise kuchi abaadis. But that has not solved any problem. In fact it has become a source of profiteering by land grabbers and the land mafia. The people who can help the poorest hut dwellers are the NGOs and social welfare organisations, but few of them are interested in real welfare work because it is a thankless job for which they will earn little praise, therefore there is no opportunity to profit from the publicity, if any, either.