SITAKUNDA – Bangladesh authorities accused a container depot operator today of not telling firefighters about a chemical stockpile before it exploded with devastating consequences, killing at least 49 people – nine of them from the fire service.
The toll from the giant blast, which followed a fire at the B.M Container Depot in Sitakunda and sent fireballs into the sky, was expected to rise further.
Some containers were still smouldering today, more than 36 hours after the explosion, preventing rescuers from checking the area around them for victims.
Around a dozen of the 300 injured were in critical condition, and were flown to the capital Dhaka.
The nine dead firefighters were the most the department has ever lost in a single incident in the industrial-accident-prone country, where safety standards are lax and corruption often enables them to be ignored.
Two more firefighters are among several people still missing, officials said.
“Never in the history of the fire department, have so many firefighters died,” said Purnachandra Mutsuddi, who led the fire-fighting effort at the 26-acre (around 105,000sqft) facility on Saturday night.
“How do you feel when you recover your brothers? No event is as painful as this.”
The depot “didn’t have any fire safety plan”, he told AFP, and it did not inform the firefighters about the chemicals, specifically hydrogen peroxide, stored on site.
“If they did, the casualties would have been much less,” he said.
Mutsuddi, an assistant director of the Chittagong fire station, said that as soon as the firefighters entered the depot on Saturday they unwittingly doused the hydrogen peroxide with water, setting off an explosive reaction that sent “a container flying more than 500 feet (152m)”.
“There are some rules to keep hydrogen peroxide. Had we known this, we would never throw water. We would never take our vehicle inside the depot,” he said.
In Chittagong, hundreds of relatives of the missing and the dead queued at a hospital to give DNA samples in an effort to identify the deceased, as most of the fatalities were burned beyond recognition.
The B.M Container Depot in Sitakunda, an industrial town 40km from Chittagong Port, is a joint venture between Bangladeshi and Dutch businessmen with around 600 employees, and began operations in 2012.
Its chairman is named on its website as Bert Pronk, a Dutch citizen, but AFP was unable to reach him for comment. Few European businessmen operate in the country.
Local newspapers said another of its owners is a senior official of the ruling Awami League party based in Chittagong, who is also the editor of a local Bengali daily.
Police have yet to lay charges over the fire. “Our investigation is going on. We will look into everything,” said local police chief Abul Kalam Azad.
“Falling like rain”
Wisps of smoke rose into the bright morning sky from dozens of twenty-foot (6m) containers at the depot today.
“Some 30 to 40 containers are still smouldering,” said fire department inspector Harunur Rashid. “The fire is under control. But the chemicals are the main problems.”
Once the flames are entirely out rescuers will search the area for more victims, he said.
Mujibur Rahman, a director of B.M. Container Depot, said the cause of the initial fire remained unknown.
Witnesses said the entire town shook when the cache of hydrogen peroxide exploded.
“The explosion sent fireballs into the sky,” said Mohammad Ali, 60, who runs a nearby grocery store. “Fireballs were falling like rain.
“We were so afraid we immediately left our home to find refuge,” he added. “We thought the fire would spread to our locality as it is very densely populated.”
Elias Chowdhury, the chief doctor in Chittagong, said doctors at multiple hospitals had been called back from holidays to help treat the hundreds of injured.
Around 90% of Bangladesh’s roughly US$100 billion in trade – including clothes for H&M, Walmart and others – passes through the Chittagong port at the top of the Bay of Bengal.
Rakibul Alam Chowdhury, from the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), said that about US$110 million worth of garments were destroyed in the fire.
“It is a huge loss for the industry,” he said. – AFP, June 6, 2022
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