Heat Wave Kills 1,000 in Pakistani Port of Karachi

The death toll reached 1,000 on Thursday in the southern Pakistan port city of Karachi as residents here grappled with a devastating heat wave that has crippled life and overwhelmed its health system.

Searing temperatures, which have been as high as 113 degrees, fell below 100 on Thursday, but a sense of panic and crisis persisted in the city, the country's financial and commercial capital as well as the capital of Sindh province.

There has been a sharp increase in the sale of air conditioners and room coolers, local traders said. Morgues have run short of space, and hospitals are filled to capacity as patients scramble to get treatment for dehydration and heatstroke.

The heat wave has sent more than 14,000 people into government and private hospitals across Karachi, with more than 8,000 visiting Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center, the largest health facility here.

Anwar Kazmi, a spokesman for the Edhi Foundation, which runs a private ambulance service and the city's main morgue, said the group had buried 40 unidentified bodies Thursday and would bury another 40 later in the day. The morgue, which has a capacity of 200, has been overrun since the heat wave began Friday, and the charity group said it was now looking into expanding the facility.

Kazmi said that quick burials had become unavoidable given the extreme heat and the decomposing state of bodies. "It has become necessary for us to start burying the bodies because of the bad state we are receiving them in," he said.

The foundation has buried at least 350 people since the heat wave started. While many of the bodies had been unclaimed, he said workers were taking photographs before the burials in the event that relatives came forward.

Kazmi said the Edhi Foundation was putting plans in place to expand the morgue's capacity to 300. "This situation doesn't arise often," he said, "but it's become necessary now for us to improve."

Most of the dead, many of them drug addicts and the homeless, have come from the poor areas of the city.

The provincial government has responded to the crisis by urging the residents to save electricity, emphasizing the early closures of schools and institutes, shopping malls and marriage halls. The country has faced a chronic power shortage for years, with daytime outages lasting for several hours.

The power outages have not affected everyone equally. Lower-income areas are facing prolonged, unannounced power outages and periods of extremely low voltage while the situation is relatively better in more affluent areas.

The heat wave has also taken a toll on the city's pet population. "We are seeing one to two animals every day on average with some sort of heatstroke signs," said Dr. Isma Gheewala, a popular veterinarian in the upscale Defence neighborhood, who described animals arriving in a semiconscious state with a temperature of 106 to 107.

"We have heard of many animals who just collapsed and expired due to heatstroke, particularly birds," Gheewala said.

For merchants of home appliances, there has been a run on products for cooling and controlling humidity. Sales in Karachi are up by about 25 percent, and prices have climbed.

"We did not see such sale of air-conditioners, room coolers and fans in the past," said Rizwan Irfan, a leader of Karachi's electronic traders' association. "The stocks of these appliances are running out."

Angered by the continuing power cuts, residents in several parts of the city have organized protests and blocked traffic. Even lawmakers from the province's governing party staged a protest outside the Sindh Assembly's building Wednesday.

Dawn, the country's leading English-language daily, however, published an editorial Thursday criticizing the provincial government's effort to blame the power supply for the high number of deaths, calling that absurd. "The Sindh government is focusing excessively on electricity as the cause behind the deaths," the newspaper said, "and not enough on measures that more directly deal with the case of the deaths."

The opposition politician Imran Khan also visited the hospital in Jinnah on Thursday. During the visit, he blamed the provincial and federal governments for failing to provide adequate health facilities for those affected.