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Published : 05 Jun 2022, 02:53 PM
An aide to a covered van driver, Babu believed the smoke that spread during the fire contained some toxic elements that caused the continuous burning of his eyes.
The privately-run BM Container Depot had around 4,300 containers and some of them contained different chemicals. Those chemicals caused repeated blasts and spread toxic smoke as the fire spread.
The fire broke out at the BM Container Depot in the Kadmarsul area around 9:30 pm on Saturday.
Chattogram Fire Service personnel struggled to bring the fire under control and reinforcements were called in from Feni, Noakhali and Cumilla at around 3:30 am.
As of 2 pm on Sunday, 41 bodies were recovered and brought to the Chattogram Medical College Hospital morgue, according to ASI Alauddin Talukder of the hospital’s police outpost.
The chemicals stored in the depot prevented firefighters from controlling the blaze, said Fire Service Director General Brig Gen Md Main Uddin.
Some of the drums in the depot were labelled hydrogen peroxide, he told the media. Experts from the army went to the scene to manage the chemical fallout.
Anwar Hossain Babu was waiting to offload the covered van when the fire broke out in the depot on Saturday night.
Anwar said he could not find Sohel Rana, the driver of the covered van, after the fire broke out.
They drove in the goods-laden covered van from Dhaka to the container depot at around 12 pm on Saturday. Anwar fell asleep when they got stuck in the long queue of vehicles. At around 9 pm, driver Sohel woke him up.
Sohel got off the van and was standing a short distance from the vehicle, speaking to his wife over the phone, when the explosion occurred.
As he could not find the driver, Anwar drove the covered van and left the depot. But his legs were burnt in the fire.
Anwar’s employer brought him to the hospital. A health worker was administering some eye-drops to help reduce the burning sensation as Anwar spoke to bdnews24.com on Sunday morning.
His eyes started to burn when he was still inside the depot, said Anwar. He could also feel himself choking. After leaving the container depot, he went to Bayezid Link Road and took a shower to reduce the burning sensation. But it did not work.
Many covered van drivers were not inside their vehicles when the fire started. With a long trail of vehicles stuck in the queue, most of them left their helpers in the vans and went out for dinner and other tasks.
Rony and Shahjalal, both helpers on Bismillah Transport covered vans, were given the responsibility to drive the vans and left without their drivers from the depot.
In Rony’s words, the flames only grew stronger when water was sprayed on them after 9 pm. But, according to him, the blaze did not spread then. It was around 11 pm, after a big explosion, when the fire spread everywhere.
The blast and fire shattered the front windscreens of most of the vehicles, as well as some window panes of nearby houses and shops. Like Anwar, Rony complained of a burning sensation in his eyes and on his face after the fire incident.
His co-worker Shahjalal said more than 100 vehicles were driven out and parked on a street away from the container depot.
“The last one we drove out had its front windscreen shattered. That was the time some gas got into my mouth. Some glass also melted, fell on my legs and burned them,” he said.
