Combustible items exacerbated Narayanganj juice factory fire: Fire service

The fire at Hashem Food Limited building at Narayanganj’s Rupganj was exacerbated by the huge amount of combustible items stored there, a fire service official told journalists on Friday.

Highly flammable items such as plastic, chemical, foil, butter and cartons were responsible for the rapid spread of fire, said fire service's deputy director (operation and maintenance) Debashish Bardhan adding that these substances made the effort to extinguish the blaze tougher.

He said a total of 18 units of firefighters were able to douse the fire after 20 hours of effort.

Debashish said the fire service is dumping the fire on the fifth and sixth floor of the six-storey building and they will conduct drives to look for more bodies once the dumping is done.

A massive fire broke out on the ground floor of the building around 5:00pm Thursday. Fire service and civil defence’s deputy director (development) Nur Hossain said they recovered 49 bodies as of 2:15pm on Friday.

Debashish said the bodies were sent to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) morgue.

Factory’s manager (administration) Kazi Rafiqul Islam told Prothom Alo that 200 workers would work in the building which is used as a central warehouse. Juice flavours, foil packets and other items were stored in the building.

He said they don’t know how many workers were trapped inside the building.

Rafiqul claimed an electric short circuit caused the fire.

Zayedul Alam, superintendent of Narayanganj district police told Prothom Alo that they enlisted 51 workers as missing as of Friday afternoon and bodies of 49 of them were recovered.

He said the bodies have been charred beyond recognition and DNA tests would be required to identify the victims.

District police have opened a control room, he added.

The police super said some unruly people tried to vandalise the factory on Friday but police fired tear shells to disperse them.