Garment factory blaze kills 109 in Bangladesh

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire in a garment factory north of Dhaka on November 24. "There were more than 1,000 workers trapped in the factory," one worker told local media from her hospital bed

A man mourns (C) a relative who was killed after a flyover under construction collapsed in Bangladesh's southeastern port city of Chittagong. At least 13 people were killed and dozens are feared missing, police said Sunday

By Kamrul Hasan Khan | AFP News – 11/25/2012

A fire swept through a Bangladesh garment factory, killing 109 people in the nation's worst ever industrial blaze which forced many to jump from high windows to escape the smoke and flames.

Firefighters battled for several hours to control the fire, which broke out on the ground floor of the nine-storey Tazreen Fashion plant, 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the capital Dhaka on Saturday evening.

Survivors told how panicked staff, mostly women, desperately tried to escape the factory, which the owner said made clothes for international brands including Dutch chain C&A and the Hong Kong-based Li & Fung company.

"I smelt smoke and ran downstairs and found that the place was already full with black fumes," Rabiul Islam told AFP as he surveyed the gutted ruins of the building where many of his colleagues had died.

"With another worker, I broke open an exhaust fan in the second floor and jumped to the roof of a shed next to the factory," he said. "I broke my hand but survived somehow."

Bangladesh is a global centre for clothes manufacturing due to cheap labour, with many popular brands using huge factories to produce items for export to Western markets, but work conditions are often basic and safety standards low.

Dhaka district commissioner Yusuf Harun told AFP that the death toll was 109, including several workers who died while jumping from the upper floors. About 100 people were also injured.

"We laid the bodies out in the grounds of a nearby school and have now started handing them over to relatives," Harun said.

The director of the fire brigade, Major Mahbub, who uses one name, told AFP that most victims died of suffocation as the blaze started on the ground-floor warehouse, trapping staff working on the night shift.

"The factory had three exits but since the fire was on the ground floor, workers could not come downstairs," he said.

The owner of the Tazreen factory, Delwar Hossain, told AFP by telephone that the cause of the fire was not yet known but he denied his premises were unsafe.

"It is a huge loss for my staff and my factory. This is the first time we have ever had a fire at one of my seven factories," he said, confirming that the premises made clothes for C&A and Li & Fung.

Neither firm was immediately available for comment.

Tuba Group, the parent company of Tazreen Fashion, said on its website that the factory was opened in 2009 and employed 1,630 workers making polo shirts, T-shirts and jackets.

It added that the plant had 60 smoke detectors, more than 200 fire extinguishers and 18 hose reels as part of its safety equipment.

Relatives of the workers made phone calls to those inside the factory as it burned, local residents told AFP, and one witness said firefighters were helpless as the blaze took hold.

"I came to the factory premises and found workers crying for help," Mohammad Ratan said. "As the fire spread to the upper floors, I saw many jumping from windows."

The cause was not immediately known but fires as a result of short circuits and shoddy electrical wiring are common in South Asian factories.

A blaze in a Pakistan garment factory fire in September killed 289 workers and injured 110 more. Two of the owners are facing murder charges.

According to the Clean Clothes Campaign, a Amsterdam-based textile rights group, since 2006 at least 500 Bangladeshi garment workers have died in factory fires.

"Global buyers who buy cheap apparel from Bangladesh do audit safety issues in factories. But these audits are often not actual inspections," said Babul Akhter, head of the Bangladesh Garments and Industrial Workers Federation.

Bangladesh has recently emerged as the world's second-largest clothes exporter with overseas garment sales topping $19 billion last year, or 80 percent of national exports.

The sector is the mainstay of the poverty-stricken country's economy, employing 40 percent of its industrial workforce.