- Hell is the latest incident to destroy Bangladesh’s security record, which has been destroyed by a series of disasters.
- When firefighters reached the third floor and found another 49 bodies, the death toll of the three dead rose sharply overnight.
- The blaze started on Thursday afternoon and has not been brought under control 24 hours later.
On Friday, a fire in a factory in Bangladesh killed 52 people and forced workers to jump from high-rise buildings to survive, sparking angry accusations against the country’s industrial safety record.
About 30 people were injured in the fire, and hundreds of distraught and angry relatives clashed with police on a highway outside the food factory, although the building continued to burn.
This prison fire is the latest incident to destroy Bangladesh’s security record, which has been damaged by a series of disasters in factories and apartment buildings.
The country pledged to reform after the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, when a nine-story building collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people.
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But in February 2019, a fire swept through the apartments in Dhaka that illegally stored chemicals, killing at least 70 people.
Critics say the new disaster at the Hashem food and beverage factory in Rupuganj, an industrial town on the outskirts of Dhaka, has once again exposed lax safety standards.
Dhaka Fire Chief Dinu Moni Sharma Sharma said that highly flammable chemicals and plastics were stored inside, causing the fire to quickly occupy the building.
The blaze started on Thursday afternoon and has not been brought under control 24 hours later.
Rope rescued
There are usually more than 1,000 workers in the building, but many people left on the day of the fire.
When firefighters reached the third floor and found another 49 bodies, the number of three people who died overnight rose sharply.
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Fire department spokesperson Debashish Bardhan said: “The workers were unable to go upstairs because the exit door to the stairs was padlocked. They could not go down because the lower floors have been engulfed by the fire.”
In the painful shouts and tears of people watching on the street, the victim was taken away by ambulance.
Hundreds of relatives of the deceased occupied a nearby highway to protest the slow speed of rescue.
Inadequate government security enforcement
“They threw stones and stones at the police. The police fired tear gas to disperse them,” the district government chief Mustanbira told AFP.
Firefighters used ropes to rescue 25 people from the roof of the factory, which produces noodles, juice and sweets.
“On the third floor, the doors to both stairwells were closed. Other colleagues said there were 48 people inside. I don’t know what happened to them,” said Mohammad Saiful, a factory worker who escaped.
Another worker, Ma Meng, said that after a fire broke out on the first floor, he and 13 other people ran to the roof, and the black smoke quickly suffocated the entire factory.
He recounted how they were hung from the ropes on the crane.
worry
Other workers said that the building had less fire in recent years, and the factory had only two stairs for people to escape.
The union leaders blamed the new disaster on the government’s ineffective security enforcement.
Karpen Oort, executive director of the Bangladesh Workers’ Safety Rights Organization Center, called the fire “another ugly tragedy that often hits our manufacturing industry”.
“The government has not made any improvements to workplace safety in thousands of factories, and the deaths of many workers are avoidable.”
As black smoke billowed from the building, many relatives who were waiting said they were worried about the worst.
Nazrul Islam said: “We are here because my niece has not answered our phone for a while. Now the phone is not ringing at all. We are very worried.”
