Photo: Moheen Reeyad / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
At least 10 people were killed when a fire tore through a three-storey wooden resort near Inani Beach in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district on Saturday morning, officials said. Hours later, the country’s fire service said the property had been running without a fire safety licence despite a formal warning four months ago.
What happened
The blaze broke out at Tuptup Resto and Resort in the Patuartek area of Inani, in Ukhiya upazila, a beachside property next to the Marine Drive coastal road, about 29 km from the Kolatoli entrance to Cox’s Bazar town. The fire service said it received the first call at 7.25 am local time. Firefighters from the Ukhiya station, about 18 km away, reached the site at 8 am, and the fire was fully put out by around 11 am.
The resort was built mostly of bamboo and wood, and fire officials said the entire structure was gutted. Around 30 people were reportedly inside when the fire started, and only four or five were reported to have got out on their own. Preliminary information suggests all the dead were tourists.
Victims and injured
Six of the dead have been identified, among them five women from Dhaka and Chuadanga and a five-year-old child, according to hospital officials. The four bodies recovered later were too badly burnt to be recognised, and the local administration said DNA tests would be used to identify them before they are handed to families. A fire service official said more bodies could still be found as the search continued.
Five people with burn injuries, covering around five per cent of their bodies, were admitted to Cox’s Bazar Sadar Hospital, the hospital’s resident medical officer said. Another person, who was hurt in a fall while escaping, was given first aid and sent home.
Flagged as hazardous in June
At a briefing in Dhaka, Fire Service and Civil Defence director general Brig Gen Sultanul Afreen Junaid said an inspector had visited the resort in June and served a notice on June 11 declaring the building hazardous. The owners, he said, ignored the warning and kept the business open. Officials at the scene added that the resort had faulty paperwork, too few fire extinguishers and no proper firefighting arrangements.
Directly speaking, they were operating the resort without permission.
Brig Gen Sultanul Afreen Junaid, director general, Fire Service and Civil Defence
The briefing had originally been called to explain the fire service’s safety preparations for Durga Puja, which Bangladesh is celebrating this week.
Cause still unclear
Cox’s Bazar Deputy Commissioner A Mannan said the fire was suspected to have started from a stove in the resort’s kitchen, but stressed that the cause could only be confirmed after an investigation. The resort’s in-charge gave a different account to a local news channel, saying an electrical short circuit sparked the fire and that air-conditioning units and gas cylinders then exploded, spreading the flames. A five-member committee headed by the Additional District Magistrate has been formed to find out what went wrong.
Why it matters
Cox’s Bazar is one of Bangladesh’s main beach destinations, and the stretch along Marine Drive towards Teknaf has a string of small resorts and eateries popular with visitors from Dhaka and elsewhere. The disaster is likely to renew questions about how such properties are licensed and inspected, and why a building already marked as risky was allowed to keep taking guests. Deadly fires in poorly regulated buildings are a recurring problem in the country: almost exactly a year ago, a blaze at a chemical warehouse and an adjoining garment factory in Dhaka’s Mirpur left at least 16 people dead.
