Another fire wrecks the lives of innocents

Days after the death of 26 people in Thursday's Banani inferno, a massive fire swept through the Gulshan-1 DNCC kitchen market on Sunday, burning down over 200 shops. This should serve as another rude awakening for us, and the authorities should realise just how badly they have failed to learn from past disasters, and the lack of corrective measures or follow-up actions that have been taken after them. As was clear during the most recent fire outbreaks, the recommendations of the Fire Services and Civil Defence personnel were totally ignored, which meant that these disasters were just waiting to happen.

The situation we are now in has primarily manifested itself due to the apathetical attitude of those responsible for ensuring that safety measures are in place and are being followed. And such an attitude, in turn, has been allowed to thrive by the total absence of accountability as people are continually allowed to get away with murder. The new mayor has said that he will not accept the current state of things. But we cannot help but remain sceptical given the overall picture of things we have seen from the past, including the lack of urgency and care from nearly all previous city mayors. And that is something that should no longer be tolerated.

We hope that the DSCC mayor's suggestion that the Gulshan fire could be an act of sabotage is not an attempt to shirk responsibility. Instead of chasing phantom conspiracies, the authorities should work to shore up fire safety measures as it should have been done a long time ago. While we call for a thorough investigation into the incident, we also demand that those whose actions or inactions contributed to the huge loss of innocent lives over the week are held accountable and severely punished.