Mehedi Hasan Saikat from Narayanganj
At least 52 people were killed as fire blazed a six-storey factory in Naraynganj’s Rupganj area on Thursday evening. Many other people were also injured in the devastating fire.
So far 49 bodies have been recovered from the building in the fire. Later, three people died who jumped from that building. The death toll in the blaze rose to 52 on Friday. The bodies were taken to the forensic department of Dhaka Medical College Hospital through fire service ambulances.
Narayanganj district administration formed a five-member committee to look into the blaze at Shezan Juice Factory, a subsidiary of Sajib Group in Narayanganj’s Rupganj upazila.
Rupganj Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO) Shah Nusrat Jahan confirmed this. She said, “A five-member inquiry committee has been formed by convening Additional Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Shamim Bepari. The other members of the committee are UNO Rupganj, Deputy Assistant Director of Fire Service, a representative of the police and a representative of the Department of Factories.”
In the factory’s fourth floor, workers work to produce lollipops, liquid chocolates, on the third floor organic drinks (juice, lacchi), on the second floor toast biscuits, various kinds of drinks and on the ground floor boxes and polythene were produced.
On one side of the fifth floor was semai, semai frying oil, polythene, another side was a factory warehouse. Carton's warehouse was on the sixth floor of the factory. The building was on fire for more than 20 hours which by this time created cracks in the building.
Abdullah Al Arefin, deputy assistant director of the Narayanganj office of the Fire Service and Civil Defense, said, “On Friday noon, the fire had been brought under control and we entered the fourth floor of the six-storey building. Many bodies have been recovered from there. The fire is still burning on the top two floors of the six-storey factory building. While we are extinguishing fire, search in the building is still on.”
He added, “The fire is still burning as the factory was stocked with various chemicals and flammable materials. We had to work more carefully as cracks appeared in the building.”
According to Mohammad Abdul Jalil and Mohammad Abu Samad, two of the workers, around 1200 to 1500 workers were working in the factory at the time of the incident.
Meanwhile, many jumped from the roof and tried to survive, but were hospitalized with serious injuries. Many of them have been sent to local hospitals as well as Dhaka Medical and other hospitals in Dhaka.
On Thursday (July 8) at 6:30 pm, the fire broke out at the factory located at Bhulta Karnagop in Rupganj upazila. In this, 18 units of fire service including Demra and Kanchan were trying to douse the fire till filing this report on Friday evening. Although the fire was almost under control, the fire on the 6th floor has not been extinguished yet.
The waiting relatives outside the burning factory building said that at least they want their relatives’ dead body. The fire not just killed their relatives but also made at good number of families helpless.
Abdulsnah Al Arefin, deputy director of the Narayanganj district of the Fire Service and Civil Defense, said, “The fire was almost under control in the early hours of Friday morning. But later it took devastating shape again. A total of 18 units of the fire service were working to control the fire. The onset of the fire is not certain, the amount of damage is also a lot.”
Workers and eyewitnesses said about 7,000 workers worked at the factory. A fire broke out from a carton on the ground floor of the seven-story building. At one point the fire spread throughout the building. The factory became dark due to black smoke. At one stage, the workers started running and some of them took position on the roof of the building.
Narayanganj Deputy Commissioner Mostain Billah said financial assistance of Tk 25,000 would be given to each family of the deceased and Tk 10,000 for the treatment of the injured.
Meanwhile, the agitated relatives and workers have repeatedly attacked the police and fire fighters as they were late in rescuing the missing workers trapped in the building. The area turned into a battlefield for about half an hour on Friday from 11 am to 11:30 pm. Workers chased police and retaliated by throwing bricks at random. Later additional police came and brought the situation under control.
