Hundreds homeless, 15 injured as blaze at night destroys Hazaribagh slum in city; all victims are women, children
At least 11 people were killed as a devastating fire razed a slum and some of its adjoining tin-shed homes in the capital’s Hazaribagh early yesterday.
The victims — six children and five women — were trapped and burned alive in a bathroom and a kitchen where they took shelter, witnesses said.
More than 15 people were also injured and about 700 shanties and 12 tin-shed houses were burned down in the blaze that originated at a rickshaw garage at Boubazar slum around 2:45am.
Fire fighters were still investigating the cause of the fire, but locals said it might have originated from cigarette butts, mosquito coils or kerosene stove in the garage.
The shanty is home to about 3,000 low-income people, all of whom have been affected somehow or other.
Just minutes after it broke, the fire engulfed the nearby houses after coming in contact with some kerosene drums, which were kept for sale. Thirty shops, two bakeries, five rickshaw garages and a mosque were also burned while five adjacent buildings partly damaged, added the witnesses.
Seventeen fire fighting units from seven stations doused the fire after two and a half hours’ hectic efforts.
The dead are Munni Begum, 25, her two-year-old daughter Meem; Surya Begum, 26, her six-year-old daughter Julia Akhter; Helena Begum, 40, her eight-year-old daughter Aklima and three-year-old grandson Sakib; Sokhina Begum, 55, her 12-year-old granddaughter Moyna Akter; Anwara Khatun, 60, and Abdullah, 7.
The injured were taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
President Zillur Rahman, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Leader of the Opposition in Parliament Khaleda Zia expressed shock at the loss of the lives.
Rights body Ain O Salish Kendra in a press release also offered “deep condolence” to the victims’ families.
The Dhaka district administration gave Tk 20,000 to the family members of each deceased for funeral.
THE DEATH TRAP
Abdur Razzak, a 30-year-old imam at a nearby mosque, usually gets up around 4:00am to administer the morning prayers. But yesterday he abruptly woke up hearing a “huge hue and cry.”
As he came out of his room adjacent to the mosque, he saw a flame rising about 40 feet high gushing towards them from the other side of the road, which is about 20 feet wide.
“I immediately entered my room, held my wife by her hand and dragged her out of the room,” he said, “within moments the fire engulfed the mosque and my room.”
But some were not as lucky.
The 11 dead were tenants of a two-story tin-shed house, which had 46 families living in it. The house had a common exit.
As the fire broke, all the tenants were running for lives through the exit. Being women and children the victims could not run as fast and instead of getting out of the building they took shelter in a bathroom and a kitchen, witnesses said.
But soon the blaze, gushing through the exit, engulfed the bathroom and the kitchen and burned them alive.
Some people, mostly men and youths, escaped the fire by jumping out of their windows and over the walls. Others cut their bamboo-walls and jumped outside.
Locals alleged the fire fighters took more than one hour to reach the spot. But Brig Gen (retd) Abu Nayeem Md Shahidullah, director general of Fire Service and Civil Defence said, his force reached in time and tried hard to douse the fire.
The fire brigade formed a three-member committee led by deputy director (operation) Bharat Chandra Biswas to investigate blaze.
Source: The Daily Star
