A critical vulnerability exposed by the protracted fire at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport's cargo village in Dhaka was the shortage of water faced by firefighters. The delay in controlling such fires is not merely a technical or institutional failure but a deeply systemic problem.
Along with the severity of the blaze, the key underlying factor is the shortage of water resources and the degradation of the city's canal systems. For Dhaka and other urban centres, the revival and expansion of this canal network is not an extravagant or nostalgic choice but an existential necessity.
A series of significant fire incidents occurred recently, highlighting ongoing fire safety challenges. A fire on Thursday, 16 October, at the Chittagong Export Processing Zone (CEPZ) required nearly 17 hours to contain. Before that, a devastating fire in the Shialbari area of Mirpur's Rupnagar residential zone resulted in 16 fatalities and took approximately 28 hours to control.
Compare this with an earlier incident in 2023 involving a massive fire in Dhaka's Bangabazar clothing market, which was ultimately contained with water sourced from a nearby pond at Shahidullah Hall, University of Dhaka. The presence of this proximate water source was critical in preventing more catastrophic damage.
A research paper on fire hazard management in Dhaka City identifies inadequate water supply as one of the major contributing factors. After independence, Dhaka possessed up to 57 canals; today, perhaps 26 remain, in drastically diminished condition. A recent study by the Bangladesh Institute of Planners, or BIP, says the capital has lost 36% of its water bodies since 2010. The decline in the sources of water, such as canals, is alarming for an overpopulated city like Dhaka.
Why canals matter so much
First and foremost, they serve as accessible reservoirs of water during emergencies. In dense urban zones, when a fire erupts in an industrial or warehousing complex, fire-service vehicles must quickly pump large volumes of water.
If hydrants are sparse and city corporation support is inadequate, and if the nearest canal is silted or illegally occupied, response time lengthens, the fire intensifies, and collateral damage multiplies.
At that time, these open channels offer an alternative. Agriculture or industrial fires, chemical storage blazes, and large warehousing fires all stress the same system. As one firefighting official put it, in the absence of nearby water bodies, “it [becomes] a Herculean task to bring the fire under control.”
There are many other benefits as well. A study by the River and Delta Research Centre found that by excavating just 15 of the encroached canals, roughly 80% of Dhaka's persistent water-logging problem could potentially be resolved.
Canals act as natural drainage conduits. In monsoon-prone Dhaka, excess rainfall must find an outlet. When canals are filled, narrowed, or clogged, surface runoff stagnates, roads flood, and emergency services are hindered.
Additionally, canals can often work as a way of transportation. We already have an existing example in Bangladesh. Commuters can commute from Karwan Bazar to Gulshan within a very short time using boats at Hatirjheel. If we can expand that, it will help significantly reduce the traffic congestion of Dhaka.
Moreover, canals contribute to groundwater recharge, urban cooling, habitat for biodiversity, and the aesthetic quality of life in a dense metropolis. In Dhaka, raising the quality of life through such infrastructural renewal is both timely and necessary. Neglecting them erodes the resilience of the entire urban environment.
Implications for policy and practice
In February of this year, the government took the initiative to restore six canals in Dhaka. But this alone will not suffice unless accompanied by robust enforcement, contiguous recovery of encroached lands, integration into fire-service planning and drainage strategy, and long-term maintenance.
In 2020, the Dhaka City Corporations were entrusted with 26 canals but lacked the capacity and coordination to make real change. The fact that some canals have lost entire stretches (for instance, Begunbari, Ramchandrapur, Dholai, and Rampura reportedly lost over 3 km each) is telling.
It is time for a concerted and integrated plan for Dhaka’s canals. Such a plan should include:
(1) Mapping and legal demarcation of all historical canals;
(2) Eviction of illegal structures and restoration of full cross-sectional flow-capacity;
(3) Regular maintenance (dredging, waste-removal) coordinated across agencies;
(4) Integration of canal-water sources into firefighting water-supply planning (ie, hydrants augmented by canal-pumping stations);
(5) Public-space programming along canal banks to foster community stewardship; and
(6) Excavation of new canals or reclaiming of filled ones in water-logging hotspots, as the RDRC study proposes.
The recent fire at the airport cargo village may appear as a discrete industrial accident, but its delayed containment speaks to deeper structural deficits. In Dhaka’s dense urban sprawl, water for firefighting is not guaranteed. Restoring and expanding the city’s canal network is a strategic imperative that interlinks fire safety, flood-resilience, groundwater recharge, urban cooling, and livability.
The cost of inaction is hidden in every extended firefight, every flooded street, and every summer day when the city overheats. Urban policy must no longer treat canals as quaint relics. They are indispensable arteries of a resilient Dhaka, and the time to rehabilitate them is now.
Md. Abdullah is a freelance contributor.
