Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Rise in fire toll is feared in Bangladesh
DHAKA, Bangladesh — A blaze that killed at least 112 people outside of Bangladesh’s capital Saturday occurred at an eight-story factory operated by Tazreen Fashions Ltd., a subsidiary of the Tuba Group, which has supplied Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other major retailers in the U.S. and Europe, officials said.
By Sunday morning, firefighters had recovered 100 bodies from the factory, Fire Department Operations Director Maj. Mohammad Mahbub said. He said another 12 people who had suffered injuries after jumping from the building to escape the fire later died at hospitals. The death toll could rise as the search for victims was continuing, he said.
Bangladesh media reported that up to 124 people were killed in the fire. The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear, and authorities have ordered an investigation.
Army soldiers and paramilitary border guards were deployed to help police keep the situation under control as thousands of onlookers and anxious relatives of factory workers gathered at the scene, Mahbub said. He would not say how many people were still missing.
Tazreen was given a “high risk” safety rating after a May 16, 2011, audit conducted by an ethical sourcing assessor for Wal-Mart, according to a document posted on the Tuba Group’s website. It did not specify the conditions or violations that led to the rating.
A spokesman for Wal-Mart said online documents indicating that the factory received an orange or “high risk” assessment after the May 2011 inspection and a yellow or “medium risk” report after an inspection in August 2011 appeared to pertain to the factory where the fire occurred.
The August 2011 letter said Wal-Mart would conduct another inspection within one year. Spokesman Kevin Gardner said it was not clear if that inspection had been conducted, or if the factory was still making products for Wal-Mart.
But the International Labor Rights Forum, which tracks fires in the Bangladesh garment industry, said documents and logos found in the debris indicated that the factory produced clothes for Wal-Mart’s Faded Glory line and other American and foreign companies.
If a factory is rated “orange” three times in a two-year period, Wal-Mart won’t place any orders for one year. The May 2011 report was the first orange rating for the factory.
There was no indication whether the violations had been fixed since the May inspection. Neither Tazreen’s owner nor Tuba Group officials could be reached for comment.
The Tuba Group is a major Bangladeshi garment exporter whose clients include Wal-Mart, Carrefour and IKEA, according to its website. Its factories export garments to the U.S., Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands, among other countries. The Tazreen factory, which opened in 2009 and employed about 1,700 people, makes polo shirts, fleece jackets and T-shirts.
Bangladesh has some 4,000 garment factories, many without proper safety measures. The country annually earns about $20 billion from exports of garment products, mainly to the United States and Europe.
In its 2012 Global Responsibility report, Wal-Mart said that “fire safety continues to be a key focus for brands and retailers sourcing from Bangladesh.” Wal-Mart said it ceased working with 49 factories in Bangladesh in 2011 because of fire safety issues, and was working with its supplier factories to phase out production from buildings deemed high risk.
At the factory scene, relatives of the workers were frantically looking for their loved ones. Sabina Yasmine said she saw the body of her daughter-in-law, who died in the fire, but had no trace of her son, who also worked at the factory.
“Oh, Allah, where’s my soul? Where’s my son?” wailed Yasmine, who works at another factory in the area. “I want the factory owner to be hanged. For him, many have died, many have gone.”
Mahbub said firefighters recovered 69 bodies from the second floor of the factory alone. He said most of the victims had been trapped inside the factory, located just outside of Dhaka, with no emergency exits leading outside the building.
Many workers who had taken shelter on the roof of the factory were rescued, but firefighters were unable to save those who were trapped inside, Mahbub said.
He said the fire broke out on the ground floor, which was used as a warehouse, and spread quickly to the upper floors.
“The factory had three staircases, and all of them were down through the ground floor,” Mahbub said. “So the workers could not come out when the fire engulfed the building.”
“Had there been at least one emergency exit through outside the factory, the casualties would have been much lower,” he said. Information for this article was contributed by Vikas Bajaj, Julfikar Ali Manik and Stephanie Clifford of