The workers were trapped because their floor in the food factory was locked and over 50 people died in the flames. Who is in charge? The investigation is ongoing.
Dhaka – Police arrested the owner and senior staff following the fire in a factory in Bangladesh that left at least 52 dead. There were eight arrests in total, Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan announced on Saturday.
No one will be spared if the investigation reveals that negligence has cost so many lives, he said. According to the fire department, most of the bodies were discovered on the locked fourth floor of the factory. The workers were trapped there and couldn’t escape.
The six-storey food factory, which produces juices and soft drinks among other things, is located about 25 kilometers east of Dhaka, the capital of the South Asian country. Highly combustible materials like foil paper, resin and plastic bottles had aggravated the inferno. The fire brigade reported that the search for further victims was stopped on Saturday morning. It took almost 20 hours to put out the fire that broke out on Thursday.
In Bangladesh, factories have gone up in flames or collapsed several times. Frequent causes were inadequate safety precautions and construction defects. In an accident in 2013, 1,100 people were killed. dpa
