Survivors grieve, worry about future after deadly building collapse in Pakistan

KARACHI: Survivors of a building collapse that killed 27 people in the Pakistani city of Karachi were trying on Monday to come to terms with the loss of loved ones and their homes.

The five-storey building collapsed on Friday in the overcrowded inner-city Lyari district where many working-class and poor families live in ageing apartment blocks. The site is now a tangle of twisted metal, shattered concrete and scattered belongings, schoolbooks, shoes and sewing machines.

On Monday, rescue officials said the death toll had reached 27 and dozens of people were being housed in makeshift shelters following the building’s collapse and the evacuation of nearby buildings over structural fears.

“I grew up in that building. I knew everyone who lived there,” said Imdad Hussain, 28, a fisherman who lost neighbours, childhood friends and seven members of his extended family.

He is now sheltering with relatives, and family members are in mourning as they try to figure out what the future holds.

“We’ve lost our home, our people. I don’t know how we’ll start again,” he said.

Karachi Liyari building collapse: death toll rises to 27

Officials in Karachi, the capital of the southeastern province of Sindh, said the building had received multiple evacuation notices since 2023, including a final one in late June.

Saeed Ghani, Provincial Minister of Sindh for Local Governments, said the Karachi commissioner - who oversees the city administration - had been tasked with inspecting 51 buildings identified as “extremely dangerous” to prevent similar collapses.

Building shook violently

Residents said the building in Lyari, which has been home to generations of working-class families from minority and migrant backgrounds, shook violently on Friday before collapsing in a cloud of dust.

Rescue workers had been digging through the debris since Friday but declared the search over late on Sunday.

They said about 100 residents from 12 families had been living in the building, and nearly 50 more families had been displaced after three neighbouring buildings were declared unsafe and evacuated.

Lakshmi, a school janitor who lived next door to the collapsed building, said her sister had lived in the building that came down and called moments before it fell to say it was shaking.

Her sister survived, but Lakshmi feared losing the gold she had left with her for safekeeping before her daughter’s wedding.

“We got out with our lives, but everything else is gone, with no certainty about what is to come,” Lakshmi said.