According to civil surgeon Ilias Chowdhury, 49 people died so far from this weekend’s Chittagong fire incident, while hundreds are getting treatment in various hospitals with severe burn injuries. Unfortunately, 12 fire fighters were among the 49 dead in Saturday's chemical laden container blast in a Chittagong depot which burnt over a 1,000 loaded boxes causing financial loss of nearly US$100 million, as estimated.
It took 25 hours to bring the fire under control, at the BM container depot, located at 25 kilometres away from the port city of Chittagong. Fire fighters are expecting more bodies from the depot area once the fire is doused finally. Some bodies were found fully burnt and only 17 could be identified so far.
Ruhul Amin Sikder, secretary general, Bangladesh Inland Container Depot Association, said there were some 1,300 laden containers in the depot at the time of fire of which 800 were carrying export goods and 500 import goods.
Source: container-news.com