Dhaka: Bangladeshi rescuers Thursday raced against time to save nearly 1,500 people still trapped under debris of an eight-storey commercial building which collapsed here, even as the death toll rose to 187.
“So far 187 bodies have been recovered,” said a statement from the makeshift control room of the rescue operation.
Earlier, fire service director general Brig Gen Ali Ahmed Khan said, “More people, dead or alive, are still trapped inside. As the rescue operation is underway, we expect more bodies to be retrieved overnight.”
Television footage showed relatives wailing in shock as the bodies were being kept on open ground of a local high school to be handed over to them.
The statement said 147 bodies have been returned to the family members of the victims. Site of the tragedy was teeming with crowd who were frantically looking for their trapped relatives and friends.
Meanwhile, national flag flew at half-mast as Bangladesh declared a day-day mourning Thursday, while army and paramilitary troops joined fire service, police and elite Rapid Action Battalion in the salvage operations.
The building that housed three garment units, a branch of a private bank and some three hundred shops developed cracks two days ago, while regulatory authorities said it was built defying safety rules which eventually caused the tragedy.
“The fact is we don’t know yet how many people were killed actually… But I can tell you the building was not built in compliance with the (safety) rules and regulations,” Home Minister Mahiuddin Khan Alamgir told reporters on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has ordered activation of all agencies for rescue operations, he said.
The dead bodies and the injured were being retrieved from the debris with makeshift slides being made from cloth. Public anger mounted as reports said hundreds of mostly women workers of the three garments factories were virtually forced to work.
The owners of the Rana Plaza in Savar and the garments factories went into hiding fearing arrest, while the regulatory authorities and police filed separate cases accusing them of illegally constructing the structure and exposing the workers to the fatal accident.
Industrial police said two of their detectives were feared dead as they went inside the building to investigate the cracks.
General officer commanding (GOC) of the army’s Savar-based ninth division Maj Gen Abul Hassan Sarwardy said army engineers and rescuers were forced to proceed “slowly and cautiously” to avoid further casualties.
“We are penetrating inside the structure slowly and cautiously, otherwise the building will collapse entirely causing more casualties,” he told reporters.
He said 600 people were being treated at different facilities in Savar, Dhaka and the combined military hospital at the nearby cantonment while 30 official medical teams and several other groups of doctors and paramedics were providing treatment to the wounded at makeshift tents.
Director of the Industrial Police Mostafizur Rahman blamed the garment factory owners for the collapse tragedy.
He said the owners were operating their units ignoring the cracks spotted in the building Wednesday.
Some workers complained that the building had developed cracks last evening, but were not able to evacuate as they were forced back by their managers, media reports said.
Meanwhile, cracks were reported in three more bulidings in and around Dhaka, raising fears of their collapse. Two six-storey buildings in Dhaka’s Ashulia industrial area and Mohammadpur locality have been evacuated by the authority. The third building is located in a suburb of the capital.
Bangladesh’s booming garment industry has been plagued by fires and other accidents for years.
The country witnessed the last major building collapse in 2005 when over 70 people were killed after a multi-storey garment factory collapsed in the same area.
Building collapses are common in Bangladesh as builders openly flout rules and the official construction code.
In November last year, 112 workers were killed in a blaze at the Tazreen factory in a nearby industrial suburb. (PTI)