As the country's economy expands and economic activities increase with high-rise buildings, more industries as well as mega infrastructures, a rise in chemical and energy uses, the incidents of fires that rip through multi-storey buildings in densely populated areas are rising alarmingly.
The incidents result in an elevated cost, including loss of life, damage to property, business and supply chain disruption, and loss of essential goods and these losses will be increased with increasing of fire incident risks.
Thursday’s night's fire which blazed through a 7-storey building on Bailey Road in Dhaka shows nothing else except death of 46 people. The death toll may rise as the injured rushed to hospital are in critical condition.
The building houses a popular biryani restaurant, clothing brand, gadget shop and renowned cuisine brands which were burnt to ashes.
Deadly blazes are typically sparked by gas cylinders, faulty air conditioners and bad electrical wiring while explosions and fires are frequent in buildings and factories across Bangladesh, where safety standards are lax and corruption often allows them to be ignored.
Fire accidents in this country have become a recurring nightmare, and it seems that the country is unable to learn from its past mistakes.
Despite numerous incidents, including the Tazreen Fashion factory fire in 2012 and the Nimtali fire in 2010, which claimed the lives of hundreds of people, fire safety measures in the country remain inadequate.
On 28 March 2019, the FR Tower Fire broke out on the eighth floor of the 22-storey building in the commercial Banani killed at least 27 people and around hundred people were injured.
Tk793cr lost, 102 deaths in 2023
Department of Fire Service and Civil Defence (FSCD) latest statistics shows that FSCD receives 22,300 fire incident calls per year, but last year it increased to 28,703.
In these blazes, on an average 149 died per year, which was reduced to 102 last year.
These incidents caused an average loss equivalent to Tk 368 crore per year, which was around Tk 793 crore last year. However, regrettably, a devastating fire broke out at Bangabazar market in Dhaka lone affects the most as there were around 2,500 shops in the market, one of the most popular clothing markets in the capital for retailers and wholesalers.
The shop owners had invested heavily to make profits from the biggest shopping festival ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr. Bangladesh Dokan Malik Samity, the apex body of shop owners, at that time said that the fire may have burnt more than Tk 1,000 crore worth of investment into ashes.
Of the total fire incidents in 2023, 9,813 incidents (35.52 per cent) occurred due to electrical short circuits, 4,906 (17.76 per cent) from burning cigarettes, 4,117 (15.11 per cent) from ovens, 923 (3.34 per cent) from playing with fire, 770 (2.79 per cent) from gas pipeline leakage, 124 (0.45 per cent) from explosion of gas cylinder and boiler explosion and 87 fire incidents due to firecrackers explosion, FSCD statistics shows.
Talking about the Baily Road blaze, fire service operations director Rezaul Karim said that the blaze had been made worse by numerous cooking gas cylinders stored haphazardly in stairwells and restaurant kitchens.
"People heard the explosions of several gas cylinders during the fire," he said.
Md Main Uddin, DG of fire service, said that the building lacked safety measures. "It did not have at least two staircases or a fire exit. Most of the people died due to suffocation."
Unplanned urbanisation challenge in fire-fighting
Fire Service DG Main in a recent keynote speech at the 9th International Fire Safety and Security Expo said, “Lack of awareness, unplanned urbanisation and industrialisation, risky storage of hazmat such as cylinder gas and chemicals are now challenges of fire-fighting.”
“Lack of water sources, absence of hydrants, traffic jam and unwillingness of public cooperation with fire fighters are also challenges nowadays of fire-fighting,” he said.
Experts stress on enforcement and amendment to Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) 2020, establishment of fire hydrant, increased training facilities for fire professionals, preserving water sources, raising civil defence, reducing corruption as well as focusing on planned urbanisation and industrialisation.
