Bangladesh Factory Fire Kills at Least 23 People
11 September 2016 - 1:44AM
Dow Jones News
Associated Press
NEW DELHI -- A boiler exploded and triggered a fire at a
packaging factory near Bangladesh's capital on Saturday, killing at
least 23 workers and injuring dozens.
Fire officials said the explosion at the five-story Tampaco
Foils Ltd. factory in the Tongi industrial area outside Dhaka was
huge, and the fire triggered by the blast spread quickly because
flammable chemicals were stored at the factory.
At least six of 14 people treated for burns at Dhaka Medical
College and Hospital were in critical condition, Mohammed Bacchu
Mia, a police official at the hospital, said. He confirmed that at
least 23 people had died.
Local TV stations said about 50 people were injured in all.
Television footage showed smoke billowing from the factory, with
the fire engulfing part of the upper floors.
Factory safety is a major concern in Bangladesh, which has
thousands of garment and packaging factories that supply products
to global retail chains such as Wal-Mart and H&M.
In 2012, a fire at a garment factory in a suburb of the capital
killed 112 workers. A year later, a commercial complex near Dhaka
housing five garment factories collapsed, killing 1,135 people,
Bangladesh's worst industrial disaster.
It took firefighters nearly five hours to bring Saturday's blaze
under control. Piles of burned materials and chemicals had to be
removed from the building to prevent the fire from spreading
further, officials said.
It wasn't immediately clear what caused the explosion, which
occurred at around 6 a.m. Authorities have ordered an
investigation.
Syed Mokbul Hossain, owner of the Tampaco Foils factory, told
the Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily that he wasn't sure when the
boiler was last inspected.
He said around 75 people had been scheduled to work the
overnight shift. Saturday was the last working day at the factory
before the workers were to go on leave for a weeklong holiday for
the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, which falls on Tuesday.
The major factory accidents in 2012 and 2013 prompted
Bangladesh's government, global product brands and the United
Nations to work together to try to improve safety standards in the
South Asian country's factories.
--Copyright 2016 the Associated Press.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 10, 2016 11:29 ET (15:29 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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