DHAKA: Employees at a garment factory that collapsed in Bangladesh killing at least 260 people were told to work despite warnings it was unsafe, officials said as an unknown number of the more than 3,000 workers remained trapped.
Survivors described a deafening bang and tremors before the eight-floor building, where most of the employees were women, crashed all around them. Dhaka District police chief Habibur Rahman said about 2,000 people had been rescued over two days.
Wednesday’s disaster refocused attention on Western high-street brands that use Bangladesh as a source of low cost goods. North American and European chains including British retailer Primark and Canada’s Loblaw said they were supplied by factories in the building.
‘I thought there was an earthquake,’ said Shirin Akhter, 22, who was starting her day at the New Wave Style workshop, six floors up, when the complex crumbled. Akhter was trapped for more than 24 hours before breaking through a wall with a metal bar. She said her monthly wage was $38.
For a second night, local residents used flashlights and dug with crowbars and their bare hands to find survivors and bodies beneath twisted wreckage of the Rana Plaza building in the commercial suburb of Savar, 30 km (20 miles) outside the capital Dhaka.
They dropped in bottled water and food to people who called out, trapped between floors. Late yesterday, rescuers forced a hole into a room and pulled out 41 people alive. Still, the death toll grimly rose all day.
Relatives identified their dead among dozens of corpses wrapped in cloth on the veranda of a nearby school. More than 1,000 were injured.
Police said the owner of the building, local politician Mohammed Sohel Rana, was told of dangerous cracks on Tuesday.
While a bank in the building closed on Wednesday because of the warnings, the five clothing companies told their workers there was no danger, industry officials said. Rana is now on the run, according to police. ‘We asked the garment owners to keep it closed,’ said Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) President Mohammad Atiqul Islam. Instead, Islam said, there were 3,122 workers in the factories on Wednesday.
‘An unspecified number of victims are still trapped,’ said Mizanur Rahman, a rescue worker with the fire brigade, as he clambered over the wreckage. ‘We can’t be certain of getting them all out alive. We are losing a bit of hope.’ (Reutes)