Safety is paramount
Pain and distress gripped businesses and people around Basundhara City on Friday, March 13th as they helplessly watched a devastating fire on the 17th floor.
The blaze reportedly burnt many offices into ashes inside the country's biggest and iconic shopping centre. It is reported that floors 15 to 19 were gutted, and 7 people were killed and 20 injured.
It took several hours to extinguish the fire, even though military, police and Rab personnel joined the fire-fighting team.
Basundhara City, a 20-storey building opened in August 2004, is claimed to be the largest shopping mall in South Asia and the 12th largest in the world. The complex houses around 2,500 retail stores and food courts that are located on the first eight floors. The upper floors house a multiplex movie theatre, a gymnasium, and the corporate headquarters of the Bashundhara Group.
The complex has become a tourist spot and thousands of young people from Dhaka city and around come to visit with their relatives and friends. It has become a "must-see" place for visitors to Dhaka
It was difficult to extinguish the fire because:
* Controlling the crowd is one of the biggest problems for fire fighters. Within minutes, hundreds of thousands of curious onlookers usually gather on the streets, thwarting smooth and easy access of the fire fighters and law -enforcing agencies to the place of occurrence. During the fire at the Basundhara city, the military was summoned to control and disperse the crowd
* All the canals and waterways within and around Dhaka have either been blocked or have dried out. Urbanisation has not been planned, and there are not enough places in Dhaka city to get water if needed in an emergency.
* The relaxed attitude of the authorities to allow construction of high-rise buildings in Dhaka without compliance of fire-safety measures is being cited as another reason.
* The fire service has logistics and equipment to extinguish fire up to the 13th floor and not beyond that. The fire broke out on the 17th floor and the fire service was helpless.
* According to the fire service, the automated fire systems in the Basundhara Mall failed miserably and the hydrants were useless as there was no water in the reservoir (tank) in the building. If the hydrants had worked, the fire might not have spread so fast.
* The modern fire-safety equipment installed in the complex did not somehow work, and one may safely conclude there had been no regular routine fire drills within the complex.
A three-man probe body is investigating the cause of the fire and the reasons for the failure of the automated fire fighting equipment in the complex. Furthermore, the state minister of home affairs announced that a through investigation would be made to ascertain whether any rules regarding construction and safety had been violated.
The fire is a warning to all stake-holders including the regulating bodies (Rajuk and the City Corporation). They need to be vigilant and alert to monitor the compliance of rules and regulations (Bangladesh National Building Code and the Fire Safety Code).
Real Estate and Housing Association of Bangladesh (Rehab) may have a role to play in ensuring that their members comply with basic safety standards of any high-rise buildings. Fire safety standards and regular fire drills must be made compulsory for any high-rise buildings in the country.
Ordinarily, the record of any government is measured by its performance in 100 days. Hardly 68 days into the job, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has countenanced testing times in resolving a series of unforeseen challenges.
The global economic meltdown has added to the worries of the government. Bangladesh's economy has been hit, among others, by return of migrant workers, slowing foreign private investment, decreasing remittances from abroad and declining exports. As a result, the national budget is being cut. The prime minister said that her government would announce some stimulus packages to offset the impact.
The richer countries have gone into recession and no one can tell when they will come out of it. The G-20 Summit is expected to begin in London on April 2nd to discuss plans to tackle the current global economic crisis. Many economists suggest that a universal plan that covers poorer countries will be chalked out, reversing their slowing economies, otherwise there could be social crisis in poorer nations.
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