THE capital city is growing up vertically with construction of hundreds of skyscrapers. Obviously, the skyscrapers with provision of almost all amenities for life symbolizes the modernity. But in Bangladesh, life safety is mostly ignored to let the buildings turn into death traps. The mushrooming growth of high-rise building across the cities without adequate fire safety measures has been contributing to losing of hundreds of lives in the recent years. When devastating fire incidents gutted lives of hundreds, it draws attention to all and make outcry in media but it takes short time to forget. The second incident of fire in the city’s BSEC Bhaban that houses a number of media outlets makes people anxious about fire safety of the high-rise building. To pacify common people the government usually forms inquiry body to unearth the causes of such fire incidents, though in most cases the investigative report never come in light, if comes, even then the suggestions recommended do not get due attention.
This daily on Saturday reported that the fire completely gutted the office of a vernacular daily The Amar Desh, which was housed at the 11th floor of the building. The fire originated from the newspaper office while being shifted to elsewhere in the city. Director General of Fire Service and Civil Defense said that 21 firefighting units put out the blaze after two hours. An electrician of the daily’s office said they were dismantling some electrical gadgets from the floor when they suddenly saw smoke billowing out of a warehouse. The daily’s authorities and some others raised question over the incident, saying that is a ‘mysterious’ after a devastating fire incident at the same building on February 26 in 2007. It seems really to be an unsolved mystery.
Earlier in November 2012, the Tazreen factory fire gutted 112 lives in Ashulia that gave negative signal to international buyers and lowered RMG exports to the USA and the EU. The horror of Tazreen Fashion fire struck the nation and brought the safety issue to the fore and after that fire service officials inspected several factories in Savar and Ashulia and found appalling example as more than 60 percent are lax of fire safety measures.
According to building code, all the buildings are supposed to have an inbuilt fire fighting arrangement with set and extra staircases to get down from top floor with highlighted marks to safety emergency exist door but nobody is seen to check the measures in buildings. However, the Fire Service Department is suffering from manpower crisis for a long that disabled them to inspect the anti-fire arrangement in the high-rises buildings. Despite prevailing fire safety apparatus in several buildings, actually there is nobody who knows how to deal the fire extinguishers, that letting residents to die in fire.
We again remind the authorities concerned to pay their attention on regular basis to ensure inbuilt anti-fire capacities in the high-rises to save human lives living there.
