Anwar A Khan
At least four people were killed and 21 others injured on Friday, April 23, 2021 after a fire at a warehouse for chemical products at Armanitola in Dhaka’s old city, the same area where around 70 people were killed in a similar accident in 2019.
On February 20, 2019, a massive fire at a chemical products warehouse in the same area killed at least 70 people while 55 were injured, with seven buildings being completely destroyed in the incident. In 2010, another fire at a chemical products factory in the same neighborhood killed at least 124 people.
Dhaka’s historic old city is home to many chemical businesses, where security norms are often ignored, which has led to serious accidents in the past.
Armanitola is known as one of the largest trading hubs in the capital, and residents said most of the buildings in the area were used to store goods and chemicals. “We have warned them. But it fell on deaf ears. You can make good money by renting out building floors for chemical storage,” said one resident of that area.
We are living in a heartless artificial society. Shamelessness, malice, hurtful, full of ill-will, and animus not only have eaten up our political arena, but also these disconfirming lineaments have flowed over or covered completely all strata of our society. Humans have now forgotten to love. Passionate outburst has gone away into oblivion. People have now lacked in feeling, pity or warmth.
The business people should keep in minds that if
the chemicals storehouses are not relocated sooner
in a safer zone, this dormant time bomb may further
cause much gravid scathe to humans
Ignoring realism is the upshot of old Dhaka’s Armanitola blazing tragedy. The event resulting in great loss and misfortune of Chawkbazar and Nimtol in the past should have awakened us long time back. Chemicals warehouses there should have been closed down long back.
Human beings must not face such a horrific death. Dhaka residents are so deeply moved again after having seen this inferno like a volcanic eruption and incapable of being put up with the ferocity of its inferno. And one must agree with the magnitude of human loss.
Measures were taken to remove chemical warehouses after the 2010 Nimtoli fire that claimed 124 lives. But there was a lack of close monitoring by the authorities concerned. A measure of the fury of flames that night was that the fire jumped, vaulting in a cloud of crowning sparks from that area. It was the frightening speed at which the wave of flames, at times leaping higher than a three-story building, came tearing towards its prey – a fury when, in the words of one fire fighter, this fire monster came to this place.
Then there is the human factor; lack of fire preventing measures, people not creating defensible spaces around their homes or taking basic fire prevention steps in storing chemicals or gas cylinders implementing “FireWise” practices that can dramatically reduce the risk of loss caused by unwanted fire havoc. Have we learnt any lessons from the Nimtoli blaze which occurred in 2010? No, not, at all. Philosopher Hagel said, “The one thing one learns from history is that nobody ever learns anything from history” and that’s where lies the veridical truth.
We need to control such a dangerous environment to make it less welcoming to fire and far safer for life.
Not only are the lustful business people described with this monstrous blazing, but they are powerless to their feelings of love and lust – as symbolised by their helplessness against the inferno. This indicates a lack of control over their emotions, a lack of rationality to stem impulses like any lust, and thus an inherent lack of humanity. Because of this inability to control their greed, they are considered animal, not human. I would utter words much heavier than these, because their avarice afflicts the world of Bangladesh: it tramples on the good, lifts up the wicked.
The law enforcers were reluctant to have those chemical warehouses moved from that densely populated area. After the warehouse owners, the city corporation and the law enforcers are mainly to blame. The deceased people were sent using body bags to the hospital morgue - this is a very painful situation. The business people should keep in minds that if the chemicals storehouses are not laid sooner in a safer zone, this dormant time bomb may further cause much gravid scathe to humans. This time, the government must not let these criminal businessmen of Armanitola, Nimtoli and Chawkbazar to go off the hook of justice.
Anwar A. Khan is an independent political analyst who writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs
