A devastating fire that broke out at a chemical warehouse and an adjacent garment factory left at least 16 people in killed Dhaka’s northern Mirpur neighbourhood on Tuesday.
Firefighting crews found the bodies at the second and third floors of the garment factory located at Rupnagar of Mirpur. The blaze at the warehouse was still in force in the evening, according to firefighters.
Tajul Islam Chowdhury, the chief of operations at the Fire Service and Civil Defence emergency department, told reporters in the evening that the bodies had been burned to such extend that none could be identified.
He said that the workers were believed to have trapped inside and fell unconscious inhaling the toxic smoke. Moreover, the exit to the rooftop was padlocked during the fire, he added.
Firefighters required nearly four hours to douse the flame at four-storyed factory building while they struggle to fight the flame at the warehouse which was emitting toxic smoke.
Three people rescued from the scene were rushed to a hospital, said Talha Bin Jasim, the spokesperson of the department.
Chowdhury said upon arrival crews found the three-storey chemical warehouse, and the four-storey garments factory building engulfed in flames.
The origin of the fire was not immediately clear, he said.
Army troops were deployed in the area to prevent crowd of onlookers in the area. Relatives of the missing workers gathered beside the accident site in search of their dear ones. Many were seen in tears.
Deaths from factory fires are frequent in Bangladesh due to lax implementation of rules and proper oversight.
The country is the world’s second-largest apparel exporter after China, earning nearly $40 billion annually, mostly from markets in the United States and Europe. The country’s garment sector employs more than 4 million workers, mostly women, across 4,000 factories.
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), however, in a statement said that the factory that was burned in the latest fire was not a member of that organization.
