Armed with banners carrying messages about fire safety, a group of around 15-20 civilians today came to the site of Tuesday's deadly blast at a building in the capital's Gulistan which has so far claimed 22 lives.
Although they had taken up the initiative under the banner of "Safety Concern", the individuals said they were not representing any organisation, but were united by the fact that they were fire safety professionals, and wanted to spread awareness after the horrific tragedy in the heart of the capital.
"We planned this get-together the day before yesterday. We wanted to come together as fire safety professionals -- those who work with designs, make fire safety plans, work in the implementation and do consultation – mainly to spread awareness," Zakir Uddin Ahmed, CEO of ZM international, told.
"There are two aspects to this – complying with the Bangladesh National Building Code when constructing buildings, and making fire safety plans in accordance with the Fire Service and Civil Defence Guidelines and getting the plans approved before starting construction," he said.
The fire safety professionals had first gathered in front of the National Press Club, before making their way to the site of Tuesday's deadly blast to hang the banners on nearby shops.
"We want that as long as the banners stay up, people will be reminded of the importance of fire safety," said Zakir.
Md Abu Syed Hossain, another person who was seen with the group, said, "We are all professional engineers and work with building safety and fire safety. We have come from many organisations, but we have come as individuals to raise awareness. We are not representing any one organisation."
"If each of us -- those who make designs, the approving authority and building owners -- perform our roles properly, then we can hope such tragedies won't recur," Mahmudur Rashid, a fire safety professional, told reporters.
"Safety Concern is not an organisation or an NGO -- we are trying to raise awareness solely from a sense of social responsibility. We have been seeing the [fire and explosion] incidents for quite some time ... we realised that [lack of] awareness is our main problem. There are laws, but the problem is lack of awareness."
