Karhail dwellers wait for help after massive fire

More than a thousand people were waiting for aid after losing everything in a fire that razed through hundreds of huts at Dhaka’s Karhail slum.

The day after the fire, factory workers and rickshaw pullers sat in desolation in the ruins of what used to be their shelter in the bustling capital where most of them have migrated for work. 

Sunday’s fire destroyed everything basic to their living: clothes, beddings and a makeshift roof.

Only the children smiled as they played among the charred remains of Dhaka’s largest slum.

Shyamol Das and his wife Adar Rani Das were squatting on the floor of their burnt hut. Das is a rickshaw puller from Comilla.

The couple with their son Nirmal Das were waiting for help from the authorities.

“This lungi I have on … I borrowed it from a neighbour. I don’t own anything back home… I have nowhere to go if the government does not help,” said Das. 

A disabled man was sitting nearby. Minto Miah of Kurigram is a beggar with a wife and children to support.

The fire allegedly spread from Bismillah Bedding Store. Its owner Samad and two workers were cutting away cloth to separate the undamaged parts they can still use.

“The fire started from a mess (lodging) behind my shop. I lost goods worth Tk 1.4 million. I’m finished. I can hope to survive if the government does something to rehabilitate us.”

Billal lives with a permanent speech disorder. He runs a tea store and provides computer-related services. He lived in his store with his mother.

He quietly stared at his burnt shop while his mother screamed: “Nothing survived except our clothes.”

Dulali, an elderly woman with dark glasses on, was squatting in front of her torn hut. She had an operation for glaucoma few days back.

“My two daughters and their husbands were at work when the fire started. The daughter of the eldest, Arifa, went missing in the chaos. Then a man returned her to us last night.”

On Mar 14, two persons were injured when more than 50 homes were burnt in a fire.  

The land where the slum is situated belongs to the Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited (BTCL).

In 2012, BTCL tried to recover the land through court orders. On the first day of its drive, it removed around 400 huts but a massive demonstration by slum-dwellers in the Gulshan-Mohakhali area forced it to back off.