The fire service and civil defence rescuers have recovered 49 more bodies from the burnt juice factory of Hashem Foods Ltd at Rupganj in Narayanganj until 2:00pm on Friday, raising the death toll in the factory fire to 52.
‘We have recovered 49 bodies from the third floor of the six-storey building between 12:30pm and 1:45pm on Friday and three more died on Thursday evening after the fire had broken out,’ fire service and civil defence assistant director Abdul Halim told New Age.
He said that they were now conducting drives on the fourth and fifth floors of the building.
Fire service deputy director (operations and maintenance) Debashish Bardhan told New Age that they had sent all the bodies to Dhaka Medical College Hospital by four vehicles.
He said the bodies recovered from the fourth floor of the building were charred beyond recognition and were hard to identify.
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‘DNA sampling may be needed to identify the bodies,’ he said.
A fire service official, briefing the journalists on the spot, said that they found the exit gate of the third floor locked for which the trapped workers could not come out of the floor and died.
'If the gate was not locked, so many people would not die in the fire,' he said.
The fire occurred at the factory at about 5:00pm on Thursday and the firefighters were now working to put out the sporadic pocket fires on a top floor of the factory.
The factory’s administration in-charge Salahuddin Mia said that about 400 workers had been working on five floors of the building.
All of them were doing overtime duty, he said.
The district administration, meanwhile, formed a five-member committee led by the district additional deputy commissioner Mohammad Shamim Byapari, district administration officials said.
‘Though the fire was brought under control at about 12:35am on Friday, firefighters are engaged to put out the flame on the sixth floor of the building as pocket fires continued to break out,’ United News of Bangladesh quoted Abdullah Al Arefin, deputy assistant director of the fire service and civil defence in Narayanganj.
Arefin said a ‘dumping operation’ is still going on inside the building. ‘The exact number of casualties can’t be confirmed yet as more bodies might be recovered from the debris,’ he said.
Immediately after the incident, two bodies were recovered from the building. The deceased were identified as factory workers Mina Akhter, 33, and Shapna Rani, 45.
Later, another worker, Mursalin, 28, who jumped from the third floor, died from his injuries at Dhaka Medical College and Hospital at about 11:00pm.
Ten of the injured were sent to the DMCH while 16 were admitted to US Bangla Medical College and Hospital, Rupganj, said the authorities of the hospitals.
Md Shahadat Hossain, a duty doctor of the US Bangla Medical College, confirmed the deaths of two workers.
Eight of the injured admitted to the DMCH were identified as Nahid, 23, Monjurul Islam, 25, Mohasin Hossain, 32, Abu Bakar Siddique, 40, Amena Begum, 32, Fatema Akhter, 23, Mohasin, 27 and Mazeda, 28.
Bachchu Mia, inspector in-charge of DMCH police camp, said three of the injured were shifted to DMCH’s Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery Institute as they were having breathing problems caused by smoke during the fire.
Abu Bakar Siddique, one of the injured, said, ‘We sustained injuries as we jumped in a hurry out of panic to get out of the building.’
The number of injured and deceased may rise as seven to eight thousand workers were working inside the factory, he said.
Russel Sikder, duty officer at the control room of Fire Service and Civil Defence (headquarters), said 17 firefighter units had been working at the spot.
