Pakistan heatwave eases with arrival of pre-monsoon rains and cool winds
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Version 0 of 1. A cool wind from the sea and pre-monsoon rains brought the first signs of respite to southern Pakistan on Wednesday as the death toll from a scorching heatwave climbed to 838, a high figure even for a nation accustomed to sizzling hot summers. Temperatures in hard-hit Karachi, the country’s largest city and its commercial hub, dropped to 34C (93.2F), a meteorologist, Abdur Rasheed, said. The drop may mark the end of the heatwave that began on Sunday. Hospital officials said admittances were lower on Wednesday than in previous days, when dehydrated patients lay in corridors and on the streets. The port city has been in the epicenter of the heatwave, described as the worst in at least a decade, with temperatures reaching 45C (113F). With most people fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramadam, ours-long power outages and little running water had worsened the situation. Karachi is the capital of southern Sindh province and is home to 20m people. It suffers under an inefficient power grid and a shortage of potable water. The power outages have also affected the city’s sporadic water supply, forcing those who can afford it rely on tankers of water being delivered to their homes. Major General Asghar Nawaz, chairman of the national disaster management authority, said that that in Karachi alone, 800 people had died. Another 38 people had died in various parts of Sindh province, and he warned the death toll could rise because many of the sick are critically ill. Authorities, with help from the army, were providing medical care to the Karachi victims. Pakistan could face cyclones and harsh weather in the future as well because of climate change, Nawaz said. During the heatwave’s worst moments, Karachi residents tried to find running water to cool off at public taps or broken pipes. Some bathed with their clothes on; others washed their hands, faces and heads. As power outages rolled across the city, women and children walked down roads looking for shelter after leaving their small, hot homes. “We’re forced to sleep in the streets,” a resident, Muzafar Khan, said. Political parties running the southern province and the federal government blamed each other while they debated the disaster in parliament on Wednesday. Some pointed out there were people in Karachi who could not find cars to carry coffins to the cemetery, and even if they made it to the cemeteries gravediggers would overcharge for their services. “I literally wept when I heard a poor man didn’t have money to pay a grave digger,” an opposition politician, Abdul Rashid Godil, said. |