LAHORE: Three people suffered burn injuries after a fire broke out suddenly at a scrap shop in the Shad Bagh area of Lahore.
According to police, the injured were identified as Tanveer, Azam and Ansar. All three were shifted to Mayo Hospital for medical treatment.
Police said the condition of the three injured men is out of danger. An investigation is under way to determine the cause of the fire.
Scrap shops occupy a particular place in Lahore’s informal economy — and a particular place in the city’s fire risk map. Recovered materials arrive unsorted and are stored densely: plastics, foam, rubber, paper, textiles, insulated cable, discarded batteries and containers that may still hold traces of fuel, solvent or lubricant. Each of those categories carries a different ignition point, and stacked together in a single covered premises they produce a fast-spreading, high-smoke fire in confined space.
Two features make injuries common in such incidents. Ventilation is usually poor, so heat and toxic smoke build rapidly. And the shops themselves are often single-entrance structures, which means anyone working at the rear when a fire starts near the front has limited means of escape.
Cutting, grinding and torch work — routine in scrap recovery — introduces an ignition source directly into that environment. Improvised electrical connections are another frequent finding in post-fire inspections of small commercial units in older parts of the city.
Shad Bagh, in northern Lahore, is a densely settled locality where commercial and residential use are layered on top of one another, frequently within the same building. Ground-floor shops sit beneath occupied upper storeys along lanes too narrow for a fire tender to enter without difficulty. In such conditions, the risk of a fire spreading beyond its premises of origin is materially higher than in planned commercial zones.
Mayo Hospital, attached to King Edward Medical University, is among the oldest and largest public tertiary care facilities in the province and is a standard receiving hospital for burn and trauma cases from northern and central Lahore.
Burn injuries characteristically require extended monitoring even when a patient is initially assessed as stable, because complications relating to infection and inhalation injury can present after the first assessment. Police have confirmed the three men are out of danger.
The investigation now under way will look at the origin point of the fire, the electrical installation at the premises, and whether any cutting or heating equipment was in use. Findings in such cases can also bear on questions of licensing and permissible storage in residential-adjacent commercial units — an area where enforcement across Lahore’s older neighbourhoods has historically been uneven.
The Lahore Times will report the outcome of the police inquiry.
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