A devastating fire that swept through a slum in the capital’s Katasur area claimed the life of a four-year-old girl and ravaged about 500 shanties yesterday.
After the fire was put out, the deceased girl’s father, Joynal, a CNG-driven auto-rickshaw driver, pulled his daughter Fatema’s body out from the ashes of his rented house at the Battala slum.
The victim’s mother, Asma Begum, had locked her inside the house before taking her older sister to school.
Deputy Director Johirul Amin Miah of the fire service’s Dhaka division said they were informed around 8:25am that the slum had caught fire.
Eleven fire fighting units from headquarters and several other stations reached the spot within 15 minutes of being notified, he said.
Fire fighters and residents managed to bring the blaze under control around 9:40am. Some 515 families lost their belongings in the fire, the fire service official said.
Abdur Rashid, a witness whose shanty was spared, said minutes after 8am, a tenant named Abdur Rahman came running out of his shanty screaming that his house had caught fire.
“An electrical wire in the house caught fire, when he threw water over the fire it went out of control.” he said.
“Loudspeakers from a nearby mosque directed slum dwellers to rush to Rahman’s house to help douse the flames, but to no avail. The fire service was informed,” he said.
A morning breeze from the north helped the flames to spread quickly.
Residents of the slum rushed out of their houses with whatever they could carry in their arms. Some continued to try to fight the fire with bucketloads of water.
According to the residents of the slum, landlords Rahman, Moti, Bachchu, Haji Siddique, Hawlader, Vandari, Rana and others rent out at least 20 houses containing more than 500 rooms to low-income people.
Perhaps Fatema died in her sleep
In the morning yesterday, Asma prepared her elder daughter Joynob, 7, a student of class one, for school. When they left the house, just 20 minutes before the fire broke out, Fatema was asleep under a blanket.
Asma did not wake her up and locked the door from the outside expecting to be back home soon from Jafrabad Adorshabad Government Primary School.
But before Asma could make it home, fire had broken out at a neighbour’s house and spread to hers.
“I was on duty the whole night driving my auto-rickshaw. After returning the vehicle to the garage, I was on the way home when Asma called on my cell phone. When I returned to the slum I saw nothing but flames,” Joynal, Fatema’s father, told the Dhaka Tribune.
“We were near certain that she was trapped in the room, but we hoped against hope that someone had rescued her and she was unhurt,” he said crying.
With the help of fire fighters, he pulled his daughter out of the debris.
“We could not recognise her. Her remains consisted of just some charred pieces,” Joynal said.
“I gave Fatema Tk5 when I left home on Saturday night. She hugged me and said, ‘Father come back soon.’ She was sleeping under her blanket. Perhaps the fire gave her some warmth before burning her to death,” he said.
His grief-stricken wife fainted several times while holding up a photograph of her two daughters.
Joynal said after the incident local Awami League lawmaker Jahangir Kabir Nanak called him to his office and gave him Tk20,000 for the burial. Nanak visited the spot in the afternoon.
Joynal came to the capital from Shibchar in Madaripur in search of work in 1988 but went back to his village home in 2013.
“But we came back to Dhaka last year because the girls’ mother became ill and needed better treatment. We moved to Bottola slum four months ago,” he said.
