Staff Reporter :A devastating fire broke out in a tin shed slum located behind a branch of the Sonali Bank and near Facilities Tower at Madhya Badda in the city on Monday.Deputy Director of Fire Service and Civil Defence Md Nurul Hoque said the incident took place around 12:55pm. Sixteen fire fighting units rushed to the spot to douse the fire. The fire fighters extinguished the fire with the help of local people at 2:20 pm. No casualties were reported, he said.The ongoing traffic was disrupted for several hours on roads linking Gulshan,Badda and Rampura due to the fire incident.Fire Service Control Room operator Babul Mia confirmed that the fire first brokeout in a shanty of the slum where someone was cooking ‘fusca’ with a kerosene stove.Locals said that the slum had more than 300 shanty houses. Of them, 100 houses, including six double-storey tin-shed buildings, seven grocery shops, hotels and salons, were gutted into ashes in the fire.Police said, Commissioner of Ward No 21 and President of Ward Awami League Osman Goni owned a large portion of the colony. In another fire incident, the steel-structure of Akij Footwear factory at Narasinghapur at Ashulia on the outskirts of the capital was fully collapsed on Sunday afternoon.Fire service officials said the fire originated on the first floor of the two-storey steel structure around 5:30pm.On information, 14 firefighting units from Dhamrai, Savar, Abdullahpur and EPZ areas rushed to the spot and doused the blaze after two and a half hours of frantic efforts around 8:10pm.Fire Service and Civil Defence Deputy Director Shakil Khan said that the fire might have been caused from an electric short-circuit on the first floor of the factory where leather goods, highly inflammable chemicals, resins and other footwear manufacturing materials were kept.No one was reported to be inside the factory as it was closed on the occasion of the Eid-ul-Fitr, he said.By the time the firefighters brought the fire under control, the first floor of the two-storey factory was completely gutted while part of the ground floor was also affected.
