With the new year being less than two weeks away, the capital has witnessed another major fire before 2024 goes out. On Friday morning, a fire broke out in an Uttara restaurant which took 12 firefighting units to put out over the span of nearly four hours.
According to reports, seven people had been rescued from the blaze with no reported casualties while the firefighting units involved had been called into action from Uttara, Tongi, Baridhara, Kurmitola and Siddiq Bazar fire stations.
Much like road accidents, fires breaking out in commercial institutions has been a difficult problem for the country to shed, with at least one major fire claiming multiple lives occurring practically every year. Earlier this year we witnessed one such incident in the form of the Bailey Road fire where, much like this recent incident in Uttara, a fire originated in a restaurant. The Bailey road fire, which took place in a seven-storey shopping mall, managed to completely immolate the building and claim close to 50 lives and gravely injured over 70 others, all due to administrative negligence and a clear lack of accountability.
From unscrupulous building managers who see fit to allow fire-prone businesses to be run in buildings which are meant for residential purposes, to corrupt administrative officials who look the other way on condition of kickbacks -- fires in residential areas are the result of a feedback loop of corruption and impunity, with the general public being the ultimate victims.
Dhaka specifically sees such fires more than other parts of the country, and the capital’s unplanned urbanization and rapid population growth are also major contributing factors to the frequency of such incidents. Informal settlements such as shantytowns often see fires break loose due to a lack of ventilation, fire suppressants, and other factors.
Fires are the product of a multitude of factors plaguing the very way we develop as a city, and the government cannot keep skirting this issue any longer.
