Standing in front of the burnt remnants of her shop in Block K of the Korail slum, Moyna Begum stared in disbelief, a helpless sigh on her lips.
Yesterday afternoon, the fire that swept through Korail didn’t just destroy Moyna Begum’s shop— it reduced her years of struggle, hard work, and dreams to ashes.
Around 5:30pm on Tuesday, the fire service reported a fire at the Korail slum in Mahakhali. The blaze was brought under control at around 10:35pm, with the efforts of 19 firefighting units.
Moyna Begum had a shop in Block K of Korail. She used it for tailoring work. She also bought towels wholesale from Tongi and Narayanganj and sold them in Gulshan and Banani.
This shop was the main source of income for her family. Behind the shop was their living space, where she lived with her husband, daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild.
With her hard-earned money, Moyna had also built two small rooms on the roof of the first floor. All of that has now been burned down.
Speaking to Prothom Alo around 10:30am today (Wednesday), Moyna was rummaging through the charred pile of her belongings, checking if any fabric or towels had survived.
Moyna said the fire had started just four or five houses away from her shop and home. At the time, she, her daughter, her son-in-law, and her grandchild were inside. Before they could grasp what was happening, the flames had already come dangerously close, and they began to feel intense heat.
At one point, the electricity was cut off and the house went dark, she said. “Then we barely escaped with our lives,” Moyna said. “I took my sewing machine with me. My son-in-law carried the fridge on his head.”
This was not the first time Moyna had lost everything in a fire. She had lost it all in 2017 as well. “Back then too, I couldn’t save anything—shop, home, belongings… all gone,” she said. But she did not give up. She took loans, borrowed money, and started again from scratch. She currently owes about Tk 200,000.
Moyna said she still owed around Tk 30,000 for the goods she had brought for her shop. She had been managing everything carefully and was gradually recovering. But last night’s fire brought her back to zero. After the fire was extinguished, she discovered that the towels, sewing supplies, clothes, wardrobe, bed, and daily necessities—everything—had been reduced to ashes.
Moyna’s husband, Md Russel Mia, works at a private office in Banani. While speaking with Moyna, his phone rang. From the conversation, it seemed someone was checking up on them from the other end.
Russel’s voice was filled with despair. On the phone, he said, “There’s nothing left, sir… everything is gone. Except for the sewing machine and the fridge, we couldn’t save anything, sir. …Everything else burned to the ground.”
Around 10:00am, a visit to the area showed a crowd of onlookers gathered in the section of Korail’s Bou Bazar that had been burned. There was hardly space to walk. Meanwhile, affected families were clearing out the charred remains of their homes.
Yesterday’s fire burned down homes in the Cumilla Potti, Barishal Potti, and Block K areas of Bou Bazar in Korail slum. Local residents said around a thousand homes were destroyed in the blaze.