Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) will take legal action against the owner after scrutinizing their documents to find the information on the seven-storied building where an explosion killed 20 people.
No information about the building, that was damaged in Tuesday's explosion Rajuk's records until 1985. Now all the documents from the 1980s are being scrutinized.
“If the building is not approved, legal action will be taken by Rajuk”, Samsuddin Ahmed Chowdhury, chief engineer of Rajuk's delegation, told reporters after visiting the building on Wednesday.
Rajuk has formed a technical committee to decide whether the building that was damaged explosion is useable or not.
Meanwhile, an expert team, including a professor from the civil engineering department at Buet, visited the building with the chief engineer of Rajuk. They put a ladder and went up to the second floor. Besides, he climbed onto the roof of the adjacent building and observed the damaged structure.
“We went inside and rooftop of the building to estimated the damaged and understanded the current condition of the bulding. The building has two floors upwards. Of the 24 columns in the building, nine were damaged,” he added.
He also said: “The columns or beams below the building have been destroyed. I will assess whether the building can be retrofitted or not. I will appoint an expert team for retrofitting.”
Professor of Civil Engineering Department of Buet Mehdi Ahmed Ansari said: “After the explosion of Wahid Mansion in 2019, we returned the building to use by retrofitting. It takes one to two months to do such a job”.
“Tomorrow (Thursday), I will engage a third party for this work.. In the next one to two months, they will check the soil of the building, check every column and beam, cut the concrete,” he added.
The building was originally four stories tall, built in 1980. The lower two floors are commercial and the upper five floors are residential. Initial assessment will take two months, retrofitting may take another year.
On Tuesday, 20 people were killed and over 100 others injured in a massive explosion in a seven-storey building near a BRTC bus counter at Siddik Bazar in the capital's Gulistan.
Among the injured, 10 people have been undergoing treatment at the Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery.
Meanwhile, the government has announced financial assistance of Tk50,000 each to the families of those killed in the explosion. Relatives are receiving financial assistance from a temporary tent set up by the district administration in front of the emergency gate of Dhaka Medical College Hospital by showing the death certificate of the deceased.