At least 76 garment workers have been confirmed dead in Bangladesh after an eight-storey building containing clothing manufacturing units collapsed.
Mohammed Neazuddin, the health secretary, confirmed the death toll and police said hundreds of people remain trapped under the rubble.
The building in Savar, about 12 miles (20km) north of Dhaka, the capital, collapsed about 8:30 a.m. and since garment factories in the area routinely work 24 hours a day, it appeared likely that the four housed in the building were staffed at the time.
Firefighters and soldiers using drilling machines and cranes worked together with local volunteers in the search for other survivors from the building, which pancaked onto itself and stood only about two stories tall.
An official of a nearby hospital, where most of the injured were taken, said most of the dead appeared to be female workers.
Bangladesh army units and fire service personnel are conducting rescue operations with the help from local volunteers. An official of the fire service said they had rescued about 1,000 people from under the rubble.
Locals complained that the owner of the building had kept it open even after engineers had ordered the building to be evacuated on Tuesday.
Tens of thousands of people gathered at the site, some of them weeping survivors, some searching for family members. The collapse stirred memories of a fatal fire in a garment factory in November that killed 112 people and raised an outcry about safety in the nation's garment industry.
Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder said "We had sent two people inside the building and we could rescue at least 20 people alive. They also told us that at least 100 to 150 people are injured and about 50 dead people are still trapped inside this floor," said Mohammad Humayun, a supervisor at one of the garment factories.
Dilara Begum, a garment worker who survived the accident, said workers were ordered to leave after a crack appeared in the wall of the building on Tuesday. But on Wednesday morning supervisors had asked them to return to work, saying the building had been inspected and was safe.
"The whole world seemed to shake and then all was dark," said Begum, who worked at the Phantom apparels factory on the fourth floor of the building. She said she was pulled out by locals.
The commercial building called Rana Plaza had developed cracks at about 9am on Tuesday. The building housed four garment factories, where an estimated 5,000 workers were employed, a bank and some shops. The bank had pulled its employees on Tuesday, locals said.
The incident is the latest in a series of industrial accidents in Bangladesh. In November, a fire at the Tazreen Fashions Limited factory killed 111 workers. An inquiry committee blamed the factory management for criminal negligence. The November fire at the Tazreen garment factory drew international attention to the conditions workers toil under in the $20 billion-a-year textile industry in Bangladesh. The country has about 4,000 garment factories and exports clothes to leading Western retailers. The industry wields vast power in the South Asian nation.
Tazreen lacked emergency exits and its owner said only three floors of the eight-story building were legally built. Surviving employees said gates had been locked and managers had told them to go back to work after the fire alarm went off.
In 2005, the Spectrum sweater factory in Dhaka collapsed, killing 64 and injuring 80.
Wednesday 24 April 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/24/bangladesh-building-collapse-kills-garment-workers
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