17th August 2006, I broke my own record of being stuck in traffic...from 4 hours a few years back to 5!!! I am sure many people would have their own stories about the day as the lightning and rain struck right at the time most office people start leaving their offices....
We saw the rain for a little while from our office doors and windows and when it settled at around 6:00pm we left the office. Trying to avoid pools and waterfalls inside PECHS we finally managed to hit Shahrah-e-Faisal expecting a running traffic...well it was a running traffic but only till Baluch Colony Bridge after which there was a deep swimming pool almost 5.5 feet deep. No kidding as a guy was waving his hand till his neck when he came from inside the pool....
That was the place we got stuck for 3 hours...a stand still...a big reason for the jam was that all lanes on the other side of the road normally used to U-turn and go back towards Cantt Station was jam packed with cars coming in the wrong direction...there were 6 lanes and all filled with WRONG-WAY cars...hence the jam...also people had left their cars not expecting any movement of the traffic causing even more problems...a water in the carbonater problem is differnt but parking and leaving after coming WRONG way is....AMAZING....
Anyway they were able to clear the tail from FTC and we managed to find one lane out of those 6 and snuck our way home....but not before the clock had moved from 6:00pm to 11:00pm...
Lots of questions....not many answers...
Don’t we people have a common sense to come wrong way? Don’t we have any foresight? I am sure there are quite a few who would disagree...and I trust them to the full. I say this because I was told by many people who had come wrong way that it was actually the TRAFFIC POLICE who was sending them wrong way...so the traffic police was sending everyone wrongly to avoid traffic in THEIR area...so they were able to show CLEAR ROADS in front of AGA KHAN Hospital and TARIQ Road...heheh...well they were bound to be clear cos both ends of the roads were in too deep a pool for anyone to go through....
The Clifton area, Bath Island and the underpass...I was told were too much flooded... and these are recent developments...there is apparently no rainwater drainage system...its about time we do have that....there were 28 recorded deaths due to electrocution, one in the baluch colony swimming pool....it was scary to say the least....and heaps of deaths would have occurred inside ambulances carrying people stuck in traffic....hospitals like Jinnah, NICVD and Child Ward having pools in front of them...and many to follow due to the dangerous toxic waste adding to the drinking water and many diseases generated from collected swimming pools...
And I am not even mentioning the poor people whose houses fell down or water poured into their homes...
Who is to blame? The government, previous government? We, the people? Traffic police? Or is there no one to blame...and someone has a solution...?
Well I know for one thing that the whole city cannot be dug up to have an drainage world under the roads of Karachi...that doesn’t sound practical considering the fact that it would be a 10 year project and the frequency of government changes and the killing of all projects started by the previous government wouldn’t let us ever be able to completely build such a drainage system....
Does anybody know how much money the city of Karachi generates each day?? The next day had to be a public holiday keeping most offices closed and most people couldn’t reach their offices which were open...I know that when a war is on...the targets are such locations such as bridges, big office towers and only reasons are to break as much communication as possible to bring the city/country in a cut-off state...communications were pretty much terminated with most cellular networks having big problems...as well...along with stuck road traffic...
well the rain did a much better job than any other nuclear weapon I have heard of...it deemed us WASTED... countries in a cold war with us should not have a Nuclear plan. They should start working on a RAIN creation project in which they could create artificial rain and send it over through artificial winds...we are doomed...
Its amazing how cities like Islamabad and even Lahore have such great rainwater plans...yes it rains more over there so they have good drainage systems to counter that but its not like KARACHI is a desert and it would never rain here....there should be a drainage system EXISTENT at least...and I am not talking about the GUTTER drainage system...I am more hinting towards a RAINWATER drainage system...
Sad state of affairs...and we can’t really do anything either it seems...or can we?
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