B’desh building collapse kills 82
An eight-storey building on the outskirts of Dhaka containing several
garment factories and thousands of workers collapsed yesterday, killing
at least 82 people with many more feared dead. Only the ground floor of
the Rana Plaza in the town of Savar outside the Bangladesh capital
remained intact when the block -- which one minister said was illegally
constructed -- imploded at about 9.00 am.
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A Bangladeshi firefighter carries an
injured garment worker after an eight-storey building
collapsed. AFP |
Armed with concrete cutters and cranes, hundreds of fire service and
army rescue workers struggled to find survivors in the mountain of
concrete and mangled steel which resembled the aftermath of an
earthquake.
Corpses and the injured were evacuated from the higher reaches of the
pile of flattened floors with makeshift slides made from cloth which
just hours earlier was being cut into shirts and trousers for export to
Western markets. Hiralal Roy, a senior emergency ward doctor at the
nearby Enam hospital where victims are being taken, told AFP that the
death toll was 82 and at least 700 injured people had been treated at
the hospital. “The toll will rise as conditions of some injured were
critical “ he told AFP.
Some workers complained that the building had developed cracks on
Tuesday evening, triggering an evacuation, but they had been forced back
to the production lines by their managers. “The managers forced us to
rejoin and just one hour after we entered the factory the building
collapsed with a huge noise,” said a 24-year-old worker who gave her
first name as Mousumi. “I am injured. But I’ve not found my husband who
was working on the fourth floor,” she told AFP, estimating that 5,000
people worked inside the building, which also housed apartments, a bank
and shops. Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan told reporters that the building
was illegal and violated the country’s building code. The huge death
toll was likely to raise further questions about safety in the garment
industry.
AFP
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