On Monday, firefighters in Bangladesh battled for the third day to put out a huge fire at a container depot that claimed 41 lives. This incident highlights Bangladesh’s poor safety record.
Drone footage showed dense columns of smoke and rows upon rows of burned-out containers. Saturday’s fire continued after a massive blast and shipping container explosions at Sitakunda (25 miles from Chittagong, the port city in the southeast).
Officials said that the fire was being contained but not completely extinguished. Chemical containers near the fire pose a danger of causing explosions and life-threatening injuries.
Anisur Rahman (fire service chief for the port city) stated that firefighters are doing a great job but it is too dangerous to work near chemicals.
Similar explosions have also occurred in the area, some of which broke windows and made it difficult for firefighters to do their job.
Officials said that troops have joined forces to stop the spread of chemicals along the Bay of Bengal coast and in nearby canals.
Officials reduced the death toll from 49 to 41, while there were more than 200 people injured. According to Alauddin Talukder, a city police official, the death toll included at least nine firefighters who died, and 10 police officers were among 50 injured rescue workers.
However, there are more deaths to be feared as some of those injured are in critical condition according to Chittagong doctor Mohammed Elias Hossain.
It was not immediately known what caused the fire. Officials believe it started in a container with hydrogen peroxide and spread quickly.
Ruhul Amin Sikder (secretary of the Bangladesh Inland Container Depots Association, BICDA) stated that almost all containers containing exportable or imported goods were destroyed.
Sikder said that there were approximately 800 containers with exportable goods, 500 with imported products, and about 3,000 empty containers at the depot. He was quoting officials from BM Container Depot.
He said that 85 percent of total exportable goods consisted of readymade garments.
Privately-owned shipping company has offered compensation of 1,000,000 taka (11,000) to each family member of the workers who died in the fire.
The International Labour Organization stated that Bangladesh is now the second-largest exporter of garments worldwide. However, its infrastructure and focus on industrial safety are still in the early stages.
In recent years, conflagrations that resulted in hundreds of deaths were attributed to lax regulation and poor enforcement.
Three people died in 2020 when an oil tank burst at a Chittagong container depot’s Patenga region. 54 others were killed in an explosion in a food processing plant outside of Dhaka.
