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52 dead in Bangladesh factory fire as workers locked inside

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52 dead in Bangladesh factory fire as workers locked inside

Julhas Alam
The Associated PressStaff
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Published Friday, July 9, 2021 5:52AM EDTLast Updated Friday, July 9, 2021 10:45AM EDT
Dhaka, Bangladesh

City streets wear a deserted look following lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Wednesday, April 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)

DHAKA, BANGLADESH -- A fire engulfed a food and beverage factory outside Bangladesh's capital, killing at least 52 people, many of whom were trapped inside by an illegally locked door, fire officials said Friday.

The blaze began Thursday night at the five-storey Hashem Foods Ltd. factory in Rupganj, just outside Dhaka, sending huge clouds of black smoke billowing into the sky. Police initially gave a toll of three dead, but then discovered piles of bodies on Friday afternoon after the fire was extinguished.

So far 52 bodies have been recovered, but the top two floors of the factory have yet to be searched, said Debasish Bardhan, deputy director of the Fire Service and Civil Defense.


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He said the main exit of the factory was locked from the inside and many of those who died were trapped.

Many workers jumped from the upper floors of the factory, and at least 26 suffered injuries, the United News of Bangladesh agency reported.

Information about how many people were in the factory and how many were missing was not immediately available.

"For now, we only have these details. After searching the top floors we will be able to get a complete picture," Bardhan said.

Bangladesh has a tragic history of industrial disasters, including factories catching fire with the workers locked inside. Continuing corruption and lax enforcement have resulted in many deaths over the years, and big international brands, which employ tens of thousands of low-paid workers in Bangladesh, have come under heavy pressure to improve factory conditions after fires and other disasters killed thousands of people.

The factory that caught fire Thursday was subsidiary of Sajeeb Group, a Bangladeshi company that produces juice under Pakistan's Lahore-based Shezan International Ltd., said Kazi Abdur Rahman, the group's senior general manager for export.

According to the group's website, the company exports its products to a number of countries including Australia, the United States, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Bhutan, Nepal and nations in the Middle East and Africa.

Rahman told The Associated Press by phone that the company is fully compliant with international standards, but he was not certain whether the exit of the factory was locked. According to Bangladesh's factory laws, a factory cannot lock its exit when workers are inside during production hours.

"We are a reputed company; we maintain rules," he said. "What happened today is very sad. We regret it."

As the recovery effort was carried out Friday, victims in white body bags were piled in a fleet of ambulances as relatives wailed. As the heavy smoke continued to rise from the still smoldering factory, weeping family members of missing workers waited anxiously for news of loved ones outside the charred site.

Earlier, family members clashed with police as they waited overnight without any word of the fate of their loved ones.

The government ordered an investigation into the cause of the fire.

Past industrial tragedies have often been attributed to safety lapses that still plague the South Asian country despite its rapid economic growth.

In 2012, about 117 workers died when they were trapped behind locked exits in a garment factory in Dhaka.

The country's worst Industrial disaster came the following year, when the Rana Plaza garment factory outside Dhaka collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people.

Authorities imposed tougher safety rules after that disaster and the country's garment industry has since become largely compliant under domestic and global watchdogs. But many other local industries fail to maintain safety compliance and the disasters have continued.

In February 2019, a blaze ripped through a 400-year-old area cramped with apartments, shops and warehouses in the oldest part of Dhaka and killed at least 67 people. Another fire in Old Dhaka in a house illegally storing chemicals killed at least 123 people in 2010.


The International Labor Organization said in a 2017 report that Bangladesh's regulatory framework and inspections "had not been able to keep pace with the development of the industry."
 
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A very common mistake in local industries is that they do not follow the correct SOPs for emergency exit. The same thing happened in Karachi where 266 people died in a fire and the emergency door was locked. A very tragic news, thoughts and prayers for the families of the bereaved.
 
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Yet again !!!

Tragic loss of innocent lives. These repeated factory accidents are harming Bangladesh's image & it will adversely effect imports.

Businessmen are greedy by nature, government should implement safety rules strictly & slap harsh punishments on such incidents. May departed souls rest in peace. Ameen.
 
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Fire at Bangladesh juice factory kills 52, many feared trapped

A massive blaze that killed 52 people in a Bangladesh factory and forced workers to leap for their lives from upper floors set off angry recriminations on Friday over the country's industrial safety record.
About 30 other people were injured in the fire, and hundreds of distraught and angry relatives clashed with police on a highway outside the food factory even as the building continued to burn.
The inferno was the latest to tarnish Bangladesh's safety record, which has been marred by a series of disasters in factories and apartment buildings.
The country pledged reforms after the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013 when a nine-storey complex collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people.

But in February 2019, at least 70 people died when an inferno ripped through Dhaka apartments where chemicals were illegally stored.
Critics said lax safety standards have been exposed again by the new disaster at the Hashem Food and Beverage factory in Rupganj, an industrial town outside Dhaka.
Highly flammable chemicals and plastics had been stockpiled inside and enabled the fire to quickly take over the building, according to Dhaka fire chief Dinu Moni Sharma Sharma.
The blaze started on Thursday afternoon and was still not controlled 24 hours later.
Rescued on ropes
Normally, there are more than 1,000 workers in the building but many had left for the day when the fire started.
The overnight toll of three dead rose dramatically as firefighters reached the third floor and found 49 more bodies.
“The workers could not go to the rooftop because the exit door to the staircase was padlocked. They could not go down because the lower floors were already engulfed by fire,” said fire service spokesman Debashish Bardhan.
The victims were taken away in ambulances amid anguished shouts and tears from people watching in the streets.
Hundreds of relatives of the dead took over a nearby highway to protest at the slow pace of the rescue.
“They threw rocks and stones at police. And police fired tear gas to disperse them,” district government administrator Mustain Billah told AFP.
Firefighters using ropes rescued 25 people from the roof of the factory, which made noodles, fruit juices and candy.
“On the third floor, gates on both stairwells were closed. Other colleagues are saying there were 48 people inside. I don't know what happened to them,” said Mohammad Saiful, a factory worker who escaped.
Mamun, another worker, said he and 13 others ran to the roof after the fire broke out on the ground floor and black smoke quickly choked the whole factory.
He told how they had been brought down on ropes attached to a crane.
Other workers said there had been smaller fires in the building in recent years and that the factory had only two staircases for people to escape.
Union leaders blamed poor government safety enforcement for the new disaster.
Kalpon Alter, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Safety rights group, called the fire “yet another ugly tragedy which frequently visits our manufacturing sector”.
“The government has not made any improvement in workplace safety in thousands of factories, resulting in the avoidable deaths of many workers.”
As clouds of black smoke billowed from the building, many of the waiting relatives said they feared the worst.
Nazrul Islam said: “We came here because my niece was not answering our phone calls for a while. And now the phone is not ringing at all. We are worried. “
 
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