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News > World

Bangladesh: 110 Died in Fire at Historical Area of Dhaka

  • General view outside the burnt warehouse at Chawkbazar in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Feb. 21, 2019.

    General view outside the burnt warehouse at Chawkbazar in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Feb. 21, 2019. | Photo: Reuters

Published 21 February 2019
Opinion

The fire has revived concern about lax enforcement of building safety regulations which have caused deadly fires in past. 

As many as 110 people died in a major fire that engulfed several buildings in a centuries-old neighborhood of the Bangladesh capital city Dhaka, a fire official said Thursday, warning the toll could climb.

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A cylinder exploded in a car powered by compressed natural gas. The fire spread quickly by igniting several other cylinders being used at a street-side food stall which spread to a small shop illegally storing chemicals.

“So many people were trying to escape,” said Mohammad Rakib, a restaurant manager, who witnessed a rickshaw driver trying to outrace the flames and then get burned alive.

“I was so terrified,’’ he said, “I ran out of the restaurant and left behind all the money.’’

Lax regulations and poor enforcement of rules in impoverished Bangladesh have often been blamed for several large fires that have led to hundreds of deaths in recent years.

The city's worst fire since 2012 spread to others nearby in the Chawkbazar precinct, parts of which date back more than 300 years to the Mughal period.

Hundreds of distraught relatives thronged the Dhaka Medical College and Hospital to seek missing relatives, witnesses said.

"All of them were crying and desperate," said a witness. "Relatives entered the morgue and searched a register for the names of their nearest and dearest."

About 200 firefighters had battled for more than five hours to contain the blaze in narrow lanes snaking between tightly-packed buildings in an area authorities say is home to more than 3 million people.

Firemen said they struggled to get enough water to douse the flames and had to pump supplies from a nearby mosque.

"The area is so congested, there is no wide space or spacious road to easily bring in water," fire official A K M Shakil Nowaz told Reuters at the site. "We didn’t find any water source nearby, so it took several hours to put out."

The fire has revived concern about lax enforcement of building safety regulations.

"This tragic incident happened due to the indifference and callousness of the government, as well as mismanagement," said Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, secretary general of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

Residents had several times urged authorities to relocate the warehouses in the area, but were not heeded, said schoolteacher Mohammad Hemayet Uddin.

"We need cooperation to find such illegal godowns as the area is vast and houses thousands of buildings," Sayeed Khokon, the South Dhaka mayor, told media.

Bangladesh has set up a five-member panel to inquire into the fire, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told media, adding that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was monitoring the situation.

In 2012, a fire in a garments factory on the outskirts of Dhaka killed as many as 117 people and injured more than 200 in the country's worst industrial blaze.

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