The firefighters continued their efforts for the third consecutive day on Monday to douse completely the devastating container depot fire in Chattogram.
According to BSS, the entire BM Container Depot site on 21 acres of land in Sitakunda Upazila of Chattogram now looks like a war-ravaged zone. Smoke was emitting from the depot on the outskirts of the port city.
The death toll from the fire reached 41. Hundreds of people were also injured in the inferno that broke out on Saturday night.
“Our firefighters are still working to extinguish completely the fire and prevent the blaze, which visibly originated from chemical containers,” fire brigade spokesman Anisur Rahman said.
Fire officials alleged that the management of the container facility did not inform rescuers about the chemicals, which could have saved many lives, including several firefighters.
"The large depot had no fire safety plan," a fire official said, adding that containers with flammable chemicals were kept with those full of export-bound garment products while it was an utmost necessity to take extra caution for chemical containers.
Earlier, military experts joined the firefighters of the Department of Fire Service and Civil Defence to douse the fire.
A rescuer said they detected four “unexploded containers” of dangerous chemicals like hydrogen peroxide, forcing rescuers to proceed with extreme caution.
“The presence of chemicals made it difficult for us too risky to work close by,” he told journalists.
Firefighter sources said no new body was found on Monday as searches were underway alongside dousing the fire. However, the firefighters were able to stop the intermittent explosions which were rocking the area until late yesterday.
But many of the people, who were wounded in the fire and explosions, were in critical condition as the fire burnt their breathing systems or vital body parts up to 70 per cent.
Chattogram Medical College Hospital (CMCH) accommodated most of the wounded people followed by a combined military hospital (CMH) in the port city.
16 of the burn-injured people were brought to Dhaka, several of them in army helicopters, for better treatment.
Bangladesh’s leading burn wound specialist Dr Samanta Lal, who is now in the port city, said, “We have decided to send three more patients to Sheikh Hasina Burn Institute in Dhaka”.
Chattogram district administration officials, meanwhile, said 22 bodies were handed over to their relatives but several other bodies appeared unrecognisable. These bodies require DNA test for finding out their identities.
“It will take some time to perform the DNA testing to know their identity . . . we expect the process to be completed in next one month,” an official of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of police said.
He said CID was entrusted with the task of collecting samples to be tested in their lab while relatives of missing people started giving their DNA samples.
Bangladesh’s fire service and civil defence department suffered the worst disaster itself losing nine firefighters in the line of duty.
“Nothing can be more painful than this . . . it was so difficult for me to carry them (firefighters) on my shoulders, those that I have seen as my sons, worked with them," said an elderly fire official at the scene.
The BM Container Depot is a joint venture of Bangladeshi and Dutch businessmen and began operations in 2012.
