Depot fire latest to spotlight Bangladesh industrial safety

ABC News:-

Authorities in Bangladesh were still struggling Monday to determine the cause of a devastating fire that killed at least 49 people, including nine firefighters, and injured more than 100 others, officials and local media reported, as experts have raised concern over the safety standard in the country’s industrial sector.

Efforts to extinguish the fire at the BM Inland Container Depot, a Dutch-Bangladesh joint venture, continued overnight after the inferno broke out around midnight Saturday following explosions in a container full of chemicals.

Authorities say there were more than 4,000 containers at the depot spanning over 24 acres of land when the fire and subsequent explosions broke out, and about 1,000 containers had goods including chemicals at that time.

On Monday, nearly 40 hours after the first explosion occurred, smoke was still coming out of containers at the scene. Firefighters called in from nearby districts and from the capital, Dhaka, were extra-careful during their work.

A soldier speaking into megaphone urged people to move.