Mamunur Rashid
Change in the design of the fire safety lobby at the Bashundhara City complex and technical glitches were mainly blamed for the outbreak of fire at the country’s biggest shopping mall on March 13.
Director of Development, Training and Planning of the Fire Service and Civil Defense Motiur Rahman, who is one of the members of the probe committee, told the New Nation yesterday they found that the design of the Fire Safety Lobby at Bashundhara City has been changed from its original plan.
Fire safety lobby in any multi-storied building is considered as one of the most important parts as it is built with some special features for fighting fire and evacuating trapped people to safety when fire breaks out.
Rahman said due to faulty fire fighting system, fire alarms set up at the building gave false warnings at least 886 times in the last two years. The fire alarm on the 18th floor, where the fire broke out first, gave false alarm 18 times during the same period, he added.
“As there was false fire alarms on many occasions the fighters of the building didn’t care about those warnings,” Rahman said adding the fire fighters of the building were not also trained enough even to operate the building’s modern fire fighting equipment.
The investigator said the fireproof lift, which can operate without electricity, was found locked when the fire broke out.
He said they are yet to complete investigation. “We hope to submit our investigation report on March 23”, he informed.
However, Kamrul Mehedi, general manager of Bashundhara City Development Ltd, said, “I don’t think there was any change in the original design of safety fire lobby.”
Regarding the false fire alarming, he said, “Our fire alarming system was quite okay.”
TIM Latiful Hussain, adviser to the chairman of Bashundhara Group, earlier told reporters that more than Tk 200 crore may be needed to rebuild the complex.
The complex on the Panthapath in Dhaka city and home of 2,500 shops is claimed to be the biggest shopping mall in South Asia.
The devastating fire that broke out at the top floor of the 20-storey building raged for some 7 to 8 hours leaving seven people dead and 18 others injured.
The upper part of the complex is for office use while its bottom eight floors serve as the shopping mall.
Courtesy of The New Nation
